Prominent California Democratic Party activist Bill Cavala has this op-ed in the March 9 California Progress Report, on the “top-two” proposal that California voters will consider in June 2010. Cavala points out that the system would leave no party nominees on the November ballot, and likely no members of minor parties on the November ballot. Therefore, they would all fail to poll 2% of the vote for a statewide race by default, and go off the ballot, unless they have registration of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. Here is the op-ed. Cavala notes that for parties that do stay on the ballot under the current law (by meeting the 2% vote test), there is also a mandatory registration test, but it is only one-fifteenth of 1%. He says that figure is low because the Prohibition Party lobbied successfully to get it down that low. His history is basically accurate, but not totally accurate. The Prohibition Party only succeeded in lowering that registration test once, in 1957. It persuaded the legislature to lower it from one-tenth of 1% to one-fifteenth of 1% that year. But in 1964, when it tried to get it lowered again, to one-twentieth of 1%, the bill failed. As a result, the party failed the one-fifteenth of 1% registration test in the 1964 tally.
Under the enabling legislation, a voter would be permitted to “disclose their party preference” on their voter registration. Currently a voter may “declare their intent to affiliate with a party”. Voters who are currently affiliated with a party would have that status changed to a disclosure of party preference.
There is no current requirement that a voter affiliate with a party that is ballot-qualified, and there would be no requirement that a voter disclose a preference for a party that is ballot-qualified.
A candidate for a partisan office (legislature, congress, statewide offices) may have his previously disclosed preference appear on the primary ballot. So if a candidate had disclosed a preference for the Prohibition Party on his voter registration, he may either appear on the ballot as “Prefers Prohibition Party” or “No Party Preference”.
Ballot access for independent candidates would be a billion times easier than is currently possible.
Qualified parties will be permitted to prepare sample ballots which will be distributed to voters who disclosed a party preference as part of the voter’s pamphlet.
Since no party may nominate candidates for statewide office, no party will retain its qualification under the current 2% rule. So the only qualification would be 1% registration (currently the Democratic, Republican, American Independent, and Green parties qualify under this standard, while the Libertarian Party would narrowly miss; and the Peace and Freedom Party would miss by about 1/3%. Both of these parties of course have previously qualified under this 1% standard, and there is no reason that they could not regain their qualification.
Many voters may switch their party registration from a minor party when they realize all that it buys them is the right to vote in a primary that may or may not have any candidates running. Typical participation in P&F CD primaries was about 10% of party registrants. Under the new system, they may be more willing to leave their party preference unchanged, since all voters will be able to vote in the primary.
Even if they were not qualified, candidates who had disclosed their preference for these parties could have that preference shown on the ballot.
A qualified party:
(1) Holds a presidential primary;
(2) Places its presidential nominee on the general election ballot;
(3) Have distributed a sample ballot to persons who have disclosed a preference for the party;
(4) Elects party officials at the primary.
(5) Has their name printed on voter registration forms.
There is no requirement that the 1% standard not be lowered. It is totally within the discretion of the legislature (or citizen initiative, for that matter).
Jim, the top-two proposal does NOT eliminate the 2% rule (see http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/sen/sb_0001-0050/sca_4_bill_20090219_chaptered.html), so the idea that only the 1% registration rule remains to maintain ballot status is faulty. Both standards will still be in play to maintain ballot access, and once the D’s and R’s wake up and realize this screws them as well, they will come out against top-two, and hard.
Also, if it passes, it will go into effect for the 2012 elections, not the 2010 statewide races, so the current system for the 2010 races will still be in effect, meaning that maintaining ballot access for definitely two and possibly four more years comes into play by meeting the 2% rule in 2010.
Otherwise, the LP will have to get another 90,540 registrations to get to the 1% by 2012, and that’s no easy feat. (Except the registration rule is 1/15%, or 0.067%, and the LPCA is at 0.48%.)
Since the LPCA in 2006 got 3.7% in the statewide Insurance Commissioner race, 2.1% in the Secretary of State race, 2.2% in the Controller’s race, 4.0% in the Treasurer’s race, and 2.1% in the Attorney General’s race, repeating the 2% is doable in 2010.
#2
You actually want to look at SB 6 which is the enabling legislation for the constitutional amendment. It will only go into effect when the constitutional amendment is approved by the voters (the amendment would go into effect on January 1, 2011; which would mean that the legislation would go into effect at the same time).
The relevant portion of the is Section 5100 (a) of the Election Code: “If at the last preceding gubernatorial election there was polled for any one of its candidates for any office voted on throughout the state, at least 2 percent of the entire vote of the state.”
But once the the legislation goes into effect, there will be no races where a party will have its candidate on the ballot of a gubernatorial election. The only race where a party will have a nominee will be for president.
So yes, the LPCA may qualify based on receiving 2% of the vote in some race in November 2010. But that qualification will not mean that it will hold a primary in 2014 (except for party officers). It will be able to hold a presidential preference primary in 2012, and nominate a presidential candidate. But no party will be able to qualify by the 2% rule after the 2014 election.
This means that all parties will fall back to the 1% rule (of the gubernatorial vote), which is currently about 89,000 party registrants.
But non-qualification will mean a lot less. Once a court compares the qualification standard for an independent gubernatorial candidate (65-100 signatures plus a 2% salary fee, or even 10,000 signatures in lieu of fee) vs. an independent presidential candidate (170- to 180-thousand signatures) it will be easy to qualify as an independent presidential candidate.
And once the qualification standards for independent presidential candidates drops, the qualification standard for political parties may be forced to drop as well – since qualification is almost entirely tied to presidential elections.