On October 10, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 477, which puts the Green Party’s internal rules into the election code. He also signed AB 1461, which says that all adult citizens known to exist in California will automatically be registered to vote, although they will be notified and given a chance to decline. But if they don’t respond, they will be registered. Unless or until the individual contacts elections officials, he or she will have a partisan designation of “unknown.” That is a different category than independent.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
California does not have a category of “independent”. Some voter registrars count voters who specify “independent” as affiliating with the Independent Party.
The only difference between “unknown” and “no party preference” is that unknown voters are not included when determining if a party is “qualfied’.
Jim Riley: You meant the “American Independent Party,” did you not? To my knowledge there is no Independent Party registered with the Secretary of State in California.
Does not the American Independent Party have its internal rules in the Election Statutes? What is the purpose of this?
This could improve petition signature gathering in California. A higher percentage of Californians being registered to vote means more potential signers, and it also means higher average validity rates on petitions.
“This could improve petition signature gathering in California.”
Andy, how could this improve the gathering of signatures? With more people being enrolled, the greater the number of signatures. Maybe I’ve missed something in your comment.
This is a big win for the Democrats.
For initiatives, the number of signatures is based on the past gubernatorial vote, so this bill will indeed make it easier for initiatives to get on the ballot.
However, for independent presidential candidates, the petition is based on the number of registered voters, so independent presidential candidates will eventually need many more signatures. But it will have no effect on the 2016 election because the requirement is based on how many registered voters there were in 2014. For new parties, the new law does not make it more difficult; the voters registered “other” aren’t included in the denominator when the party requirement is calculated.
@AI,
California permits write-ins for party affiliation (political party preference). These are tabulated as “Other”. If a party wishes to be recognized as qualified to hold a presidential primary, it tells the Secretary of State, and the county election officials go through all the Other registrations to count up number of voters registered with that party.
Some voters write-in “Independent” (there is a check-box for American Independent). Some counties recognize “Independent” as Other. Other counties recognize “Independent” as “No Party Preference”.
Would this not then force jury duty on everybody? As far as I know the lists for jury duty are based on licensed drivers and registered voters. If you applied for neither then you weren’t on the jury duty list.
“AMcCarrick
October 11, 2015 at 8:43 pm
Would this not then force jury duty on everybody? As far as I know the lists for jury duty are based on licensed drivers and registered voters. If you applied for neither then you weren’t on the jury duty list.”
This does not force jury duty on anybody. First off, a person can already be sent a jury duty notification off of Driver’s License and State ID roles. Second of all, jury duty notices are not sent by certified mail, so there is no proof that anyone ever received one, so if people do not respond, there’s nothing that can be done to them because there is no proof that they received the notice.
Ideally, people should want to serve on juries so they can vote not guilty anytime anyone is being prosecuted for a “crime” where there is no victim (drug offenses, gun control offenses, etc…). Jurors have a right to judge not only the facts of a case, but also the validity of a law itself, and if they believe that the law is unjust, they have a right to vote not guilty, even if it is obvious that the person is guilty. This is known as jury nullification.
@Andy: What percentage of people called to jury duty actually serve on a jury? And what percentage of those are on a criminal case where the offense charged is a victimless crime?
Every time I’ve been called for jury duty, I haven’t even made it to voir dire because the case didn’t proceed to jury trial (most likely due to a plea bargain, although the prospective jurors weren’t provided details). Nevertheless, I still had to spend most of the day in the courthouse. I can understand why even people who are enthusiastic about the prospect of jury nullification might be dissatisfied with the prospect of jury duty.
I don’t know the exact percentages, but I do know that only a small percent of cases make it to jury trials, and sure, not all of them are for victimless crimes, but some of them are, and there are also cases where the law was misapplied, or a person was otherwise falsely charged.
The legal system in this country is so screwed up that most people end up taking plea deals, because most people know that they will probably get screwed over in court, even if they are not guilty of anything.
The vior dire process has been rigged in this county to block free thinking people from sitting on juries, because the judges and government prosecutors want mindless conformists who will rubber stamp anything that they say as jurors. Only a small percentage of the population even knows what jury nullification is, and even among people who tend to be the type who think for themselves, few of them know how to make it through the vior dire process.
I do not know what percentage of the population knows what jury nullification is, but I would not be surprised if it is 1% or less.
I attended a large marijuana legalization rally a couple of years ago, and I did some jury nullification outreach there, and only a tiny percentage of the people that I spoke to there knew what jury nullification was, and a lot of the people there were political activist types, so among non-activist types I imagine that the percent of people who know about jury nullification is even lower.
“Driver’s License and State ID roles”
Should read, “rolls.”
One can always find more information on Jury Power by visiting FIJA.org. The Fully Informed Jury Association was started by Montana Libertarians under the direction of Larry Dodge and Don Doig.