Next Tuesday, California voters will go to the polls (unless they've already voted early). In the race for governor, two candidates will emerge from the pack and become the only two choices available to voters on the November general election ballot. And I have to admit, I am personally still undecided as to who I am going to vote for.

I should begin by apologizing to all readers who live outside of the Golden State, because I do realize I have written quite a bit about this primary election, when I usually don't highlight state-level politics all that much in my columns. Part of this has been the wide-open nature of the race (California hasn't had an open governor's race in a while), and part of it has been my frustration with our "top-two jungle primary" arrangement, which I believe is flawed and in need of reform.

But because the primary is now only days away, let's take a look at the race and the options I have on my ballot. Not all of the options, which would take far too long to even list (there are a whopping 61 candidates on the ballot, including one guy who legally changed his name to "LivingForGod AndCountry DeMott").

There have been six candidates who could have been viable (in my opinion). Two of these were Republicans, and the others Democrats. None of them has dominated the field in any noticeable way, throughout the entire process.

Early on, Democrats began to become worried when it appeared that the two Republicans had a decent shot of locking out all of the Democrats from the November ballot. Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco started off by splitting the roughly 40 percent of the California electorate that votes Republican, giving them roughly 20 percent each. But the Democratic field was so fractured that none of them were polling at the same 20-percent level. This could have left the 60 percent of the California electorate who votes for Democrats with nobody on the ballot to vote for in the general election (no write-in candidates are allowed in November).

Thankfully -- and I say that without a trace of irony -- Donald Trump changed the dynamics of the race, by endorsing Hilton. This has served to boost Hilton's polling, while Bianco has faded away. So it's no longer looking very likely that the Democrats will get shut out after Tuesday's votes are counted.

The question has now become: which Democrat? Who will get the chance to take on Hilton in the general election? The Democratic field was shaken up in a big way a while back, when Eric Swalwell -- who had been leading the Democratic field in many polls -- was forced to drop out of the race due to a scandal (multiple women accused him of sexual assault).

At the time, Swalwell was leading the Democratic field, but not by much. In second and third place were Katie Porter and Tom Steyer. Surprisingly, however, neither of them got much of a polling boost when Swalwell dropped out. Instead, another candidate -- Xavier Becerra -- leapt upwards and now leads the Democratic field. Steyer is hanging in there, a few points back, but Porter has faded. Individual polls differ, but when you average out the most recent of them for the entire field of candidates, Hilton and Becerra are neck-and-neck, Steyer remains a few points back, and Bianco and Porter have fallen so far back that neither one seems to have a chance.

This leaves me with a dilemma. I had intended to vote for Katie Porter, because I like her feistiness and her willingness to use facts and figures to fight political spin from corporate bigwigs and other powerful people. But if she truly does not have a chance on Tuesday, voting for her would be wasting my vote.

I have problems with both of the other Democrats in the race, I should state. Becerra is a very establishment type of Democrat, having served in the U.S. House of Representatives for over 20 years before first being picked to replace Kamala Harris as the state's attorney general (after Harris won her Senate seat) and then winning an election to serve a full term. When Joe Biden won the White House, Becerra was picked to be his secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra is what I would call an incrementalist -- favoring tinkering around at the edges rather than pushing for bigger changes to the system. He doesn't exactly ooze charisma, either.

Tom Steyer, on the other hand, is a billionaire. He's trying to be a modern-day F.D.R., in essence. Roosevelt was called a "traitor to his class" for coming from the world of wealth and privilege but then championing the working class and the poor when he became president. F.D.R. embraced this, famously declaring in one speech:

We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.

That's the kind of billionaire Tom Steyer wants everyone to think he is. He has spent an obscene amount of his own money -- almost $200 million, and counting -- on his campaign so far. He has absolutely blanketed the airwaves with ads -- so much so that it is rare to even see an ad by any other candidate (at least, in the media market I live in). He is trying to buy his way into the governor's office, plain and simple.

However, Steyer does talk a good line. He is championing extremely progressive positions on all sorts of issues. His agenda isn't all that different from the agenda of Bernie Sanders, to put it another way.

The question is whether he can be believed or not. Will he truly attempt to make sweeping changes in California's government? Will he try big, bold things? Even if he does, can he succeed at any of them? He's never held any political office, and he will have to deal with a Democratic legislature that jealously guards its own power at times (even with a fellow Democrat in the governor's office). So it's an open question how effective Steyer would be as governor. But at least he is talking the progressive talk, out on the campaign trail. When I look at his stance on various issues, I don't have any fundamental ideological disagreements with any of them.

Even so, voting for a billionaire in today's political environment isn't all that appealing (to me personally). But it is looking like it'll be a close race between second and third place in the "top two" primary. So I am left to decide whether to vote for the candidate that I truly want to support (Katie Porter), even though she probably doesn't have a chance of making it to November, or voting strategically for a candidate in the hopes of him beating the odds and making it to the general election.

If the race really were just between Becerra and Steyer, I would have to choose Steyer. I want a governor who will at least try to shake things up in Sacramento a bit, rather than just one who is content to tinker around the edges. And Steyer's not that far behind Becerra in the polling. Steyer still has a decent shot of making it to November, whereas Porter doesn't seem to.

So I have yet to make up my mind who to vote for. My one hope is that all this frustration over California's primary election system will usher in some sort of changes to it. Because at this point, pretty much any other system seems superior to what we've got now. Ideally, the ballot would be ranked-choice, which would mean I could vote for Porter but then still have my vote count if she didn't make it. Or we could have a top-four system instead of top-two. Or go back to closed primaries where each political party had their own separate ballot. Hopefully California voters will get to choose between some other system of running primary elections soon, because I think the "top-two jungle primary" has just about run its course.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant