On June 6, the Republican and Democratic Parties filed their opening briefs in Washington State Republican Party v State, 11-35125. This is the same lawsuit that was originally filed in 2005, against the Washington state top-two system. The major party briefs deal with freedom of association. The Libertarian Party’s brief is now due June 20, and it will focus on the ballot access arguments.
In the federal California case against two particular aspects of the California top-two system, the hearing set last week in U.S. District Court was canceled. Judges cancel oral arguments sometimes when they feel they already know everything they want to know about a case. That case is called Chamness v Bowen and is in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. It is very likely that Judge Otis Wright will uphold both the discriminatory policy on party labels, and the policy that permits write-in space on ballots but says those write-ins can never be counted. Judge Wright had earlier this year refused to issue an injunction against the labels policy.
The top 2 primary is worthless — just like old time party hack primaries.
P.R. —
equal ballot access petitions
NO primaries are needed or wanted.
Much too difficult for reformer MORONS to understand.
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It is interesting that the Democrats and Republicans asked for the same 3 judges. Back in double-aught-six, the 9th Circuit teed it up for the Supreme Court.
The ballot used in the Central Washington University experiment is not a format used in actual elections, and makes some alignment mistakes that the Brennan Center has warned against.
The alignment of the instructions with the ballot races may cause voters to perceive two rows of information. The use of double ruled lines between the two instructions reinforces this perception. In addition the individual offices are not labelled as being partisan offices. The actual ballot from the August 2008 election actually contained a ballot proposition that could have made King County elections non-partisan but with party labels.
The parties would probably argue that voters would read the instruction about marking ovals and write-ins realize, that this was known information, and skip down to the next instruction. But voters might scan left to right, and completely overlook this information.
The Republican Party is hypocritical about the issue of the Washington State constitution. When the Washington Supreme Court made its original decision, the Republican Party lambasted the decision, which was a narrow 5-4 decision. In that decision, the majority went on page after page trying to rationalize their decision. The minority opinion was a succinct one page opinion, that the voters knew what they were voting on. Now the Republicans want a federal court to apply a Washington Supreme Court decision based on a different set of facts. There is nothing to prevent the Republican Party from raising the issue in the Washington courts.
The Republican Party misrepresents the issue of severability with regard to election of PCO and the 2005 decision. In 2005, the district court had basically said that the only way to save I-872 would have been to completely eliminate party labels. Since that would have destroyed its purpose, it was not severable. I-872 did not modify the sections of statute dealing with PCO elections.
One wonders why the Republicans are so actively attacking the initiative process.
http://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/toptwo.aspx
How many dead trees for the paperwork in the WA top 2 case since 2005 ??? — year 6 and counting.
Will more trees die for the paperwork in the CA top 2 case(s) ???
SCREW THIS ….I’M VOTING LIBERTARIAN!!!!!!!!