California held its primary last month. There were 2 US House races in which one of the major parties had no one printed on the ballot, but in which the party backed a particular write-in candidate in its own primary. Also, there were 3 legislative races like that. None of the 5 major party members received enough votes to qualify for the November ballot. This is because California has one of the nation’s most severe write-in thresholds for candidates who seek to be nominated by write-in at a party primary.

It seems fairly likely that at least one of the candidates plans to sue to overturn the write-in threshold. The California Constitution now says that a party may not be denied the right to have the person who received the most votes in its primary, placed on the November ballot. The State Constitutional provision seems on its face to cover all kinds of votes, write-in votes as well as votes for a person whose name had been printed on the primary ballot.