On May 25, the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the validity of Proposition 60, passed by the voters in November 2004. Proposition 60 added a single sentence to the California Constitution, and that single sentence appears to make it easier for small qualified parties to nominate candidates by write-in vote at their own primaries. The single sentence of Prop. 60 is “A political party that participated in a primary election for a partisan office has the right to participate in the general election for that office and shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party’s candidates.”

This constitutional provision seems to invalidate sec. 8605 of the California elections code, which won’t let any party nominate by write-in vote at its own primary unless the write-in candidate receives a number of write-ins equal to 1% of the vote for that office at the last general election. This law has kept all parties, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, from nominating any candidates by write-in at its own primary, ever since 1968. The qualified minor parties simply don’t have enough members to meet the threshold, which is approximately 100,000 write-ins for statewide office, and 2,000 for U.S. House.