Hankster News of the Day for Independents - June 6

• Meet the OutFront Political Strike Team (CNN/OutFront) IndependentVoting.org's Omar H. Ali is #2 - right after John Avlon, team also includes David Gergen and Linda Killian among others...
• Jason Olson: California's independent voters are big winners in Tuesday's primary election (Visalia Times Delta) Even before the first vote is counted, Tuesday's statewide primary election had a big winner: California's independent voters. For the first time in more than a decade, the votes of the state's 3.6 million independent voters (now called "No Party Preference") actually mattered in state legislative and congressional elections. The political impact on the state's elections has been dramatic.
  NOTE: This article also ran on The Hankster on Monday
• California voters mixed about new top-two primary (By Jim Sanders, Sac Bee) The new system also gives more clout to no-party-preference voters, whose ranks have jumped from 10.7 percent of California's electorate in 1996 to 21.3 percent today. Republican Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria, as a state senator, forced the top-two primary onto the 2010 ballot by making it one of several demands to Democratic legislative leaders in return for his pivotal vote to end an 81-day budget impasse in 2009.
• Incumbents advance in low turnout Calif. primary (Juliet Williams, RealClearPolitics) Feinstein, the 78-year-old incumbent Democrat, easily advanced to the general election, where she will face the next highest vote-getter. Elizabeth Emken, an autism activist who won the GOP's endorsement, had a healthy lead in a crowded field of 23 challengers, 14 of them Republicans.
• I don't like being told how to vote (LETTER Arizona Republic) Regarding the letter Saturday about America having a three-party system -- "(R)epublicans, (D)emocrats and (I)ndecisives": It was cute. It was also far from the truth.
• Senate teams clash over a schedule for debates Brown, Warren OK 2 on TV; rest in flux (By Noah Bierman, Boston Globe Staff) Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma who owns a home in Hingham, said both sides are seeking public relations advantage. “They’re playing strategy games,’’ he said. “The feeling would be probably, OK, because Brown was the first to say, ‘I would do this,’ then the Warren campaign says, ‘Let’s call for more to make him look like he’s afraid of debates.’ ’’