California elects an Insurance Commissioner on a partisan basis. Last month, Steve Poizner changed his registration from Republican to independent. He served as California’s Republican Insurance Commissioner 2006-2010. He has just announced that he will run for his old office in 2018, but this time he will be an independent candidate.
He will be handicapped by the California law that does not permit independent candidates to have the label “independent” on the ballot. Instead he must have “party preference: none.”
NONPARTISAN AppV for ALL exec/judic offices.
“He will be handicapped by the California law that does not permit independent candidates to have the label “independent” on the ballot. Instead he must have “party preference: none.””
Does this actually matter? How many people would be less likely to vote for him just because he is not labeled as an independent?
I think one reason why this might be the case in CA is that there is the “American Independent” party (created from the segregationist party) that officials might say will be confusing to voters who may believe he is a member of that party. Oddly enough, most people who are technically a part of that party don’t even realize that they are members and many times are horrified that they are part of that backward group.
Nick, the research shows it does make a difference. The August 1 2013 print issue of Ballot Access News carried a chart showing that independent candidates in states that permit that label averaged 33.23% of the vote in 2-candidate races in 2012, whereas independent candidates in states that don’t permit that word averaged 30.21%.
Brandon, the American Independent Party was on the ballot continuously 1968 to the present. Yet California permitted “independent” to be the ballot label for independent candidates all those years until 2012. The real reason the legislature banned “independent” for independent candidates for Congress and state office was a desire to hurt independent candidates. “Independent” is still permitted for presidential independents in California, but the petition is so tough, no one has used it since 1992.
One more const amdt part —
NO primaries, caucuses and conventions — ZERO party hack stuff.
A candidate picks his/her own ballot label on his/her general election [one election day] nominating petition form – perhaps one word – max 16 letters.
I doubt that you can show statistical significance for the difference. There is clearly a larger effect based on the opposition party, which probably correlates with the reason there is only one major party candidate. There can be effects due to district size and location. Half the results for when “independent” was not used are from Florida or South Carolina.
If someone started voting in 1964, it was not until 2010 when they would have had to take off their shoes to count “Independent” congressional candidates in California – over 1000 elections. It is pretense that they took the label “Independent” away to hurt non-partisan candidates.
Any sort of *platform* stuff in the brains of *independents* ???
More or less control freak STATISM in 6,000 plus years.