The California State Senate is meeting on Sunday evening, February 15. The budget cannot pass unless one more Senator agrees to vote for it. Senator Abel Maldonado, a Republican from the central coast, says he will vote for the budget if the legislature passes ACA 6. ACA 6, by Senator Charles Calderon, would move elections for state office to June of even-numbered years. All voters would get the same ballot for state office, and that ballot would contain the names of all candidates for state office. Anyone getting 50% of the vote would be elected. If no one got 50%, a run-off would be held in November.
If ACA 6 passes, the voters would then vote on the plan. The plan is virtually identical to Louisiana’s system. Like ACA 6, Louisiana holds closed or semi-closed primaries for Congress, but uses non-partisan elections for state office. The party affiliation of each candidate for state office appears on the ballot, but has no practical meaning.
The bill reads like a Washington top-two system tweaked to allow parties control over their label. Sounds more like “vaguely less partisan elections in theory”.
Richard, would this conflict with Proposition 60?
“Non-partisan elections” are a bad idea. All that it does in practice is make it harder to determine what the candidates actually stand for. We have that here in Nebraska for state legislature and most everyone (who bothers to vote, that is) hates it.
#2 It is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that would repeal the provisions inserted by Proposition 60.
It is a bit awkward in that regard, since it was necessary to knock out the Prop 60 language; but insert something that would be more appropriate in legislation than in a constitution.
When it is passed, it will require implementing legislation. It does not define how candidates would be presented on the ballot. For example, it says that a voter may vote for any candidate, regardless of the candidate’s party affiliation or preference. But that can certainly be achieved without inclusion of a candidate’s party affiliation or “preference” on the ballot.
It does not define how a party would go about endorsing candidates, or whether such endorsements would appear on the ballot. It would appear to require a complete redo of the petition requirements for candidates. Currently qualification for a party primary is much much easier than for an independent candidate to qualify for the general election ballot. If a voter has a constitutional right to vote for any candidate regardless of the candidate’s party affiliation, then it can not be harder to vote for some candidates than other, including being harder to get on the ballot.
And if the petition requirements for independent state senate and gubernatorial candidates was made reasonable, then the petition requirements for independent congressional and presidential candidates would likely get thrown out in court.
If a candidate failed to receive the endorsement of a political party, they could probably run as an independent candidate, since any action leading to an endorsement would be a private matter by the party, and could not be enforced by the State.
The amendment would not appear to preclude write-in votes in the general election. It simply states which candidates will be listed on the ballot.
The US Constitution (Article 1, Section 2 and 17th Amendment) requires that voters qualified to vote for the larger branch of the legislature are qualified to vote for US representatives and senators. Since all voters would be qualified to vote in the primary for the Assembly, then they would be qualified to vote for US representative and US senators. This would mean that the political parties would be required to open their congressional primaries to independents; or perhaps, more radically, to require California switch to non-partisan primaries for congressional elections as well (it could get around the requirements of Foster v. Love by conducting the congressional elections as a Top 2 primary.
The California Constitution does set the November election date for the legislature and governor. The June date for the primary is a matter of state law. There is no reason it couldn’t be moved later in the year.
The June election for state offices would be the general election. The November election, if necessary, would be a runoff.
If the “top two” were used for congressional elections, the first round would have to be on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even-numbered years. Any necessary runoff would have to be at a later date.
I’m still predicting that the California assembly won’t pass this measure. If a “top two” proposition reaches the ballot, it will be by means of the initiative process.
Putting the candidates’ party labels on a “top two” ballot is information for the voters. Since California, like Louisiana, registers voters by party, and that’s public record, it’s no big deal.
ACA 6 repeals Prop. 60, the 2004 constitutional amendment that said qualified parties have a right to put the person who got most votes in their primaries on the November ballot.
#5 Washington held its Top 2 primary for congressional elections in August 2008.
#8: As we’ve previously discussed, that requires that a candidate get at least 25% or so in order to advance to the election on the first Tuesday in November.
There are federal court precedents that say that is unconstitutional. Whether Washington gets to continue using that system for its congressional elections remains to be seen.