Steven Greenhut, a regular columnist for the Orange County Register, has this commentary today on the California measure that will appear on the ballot in June 2010 as the “top-two open primary”.
Steven Greenhut, a regular columnist for the Orange County Register, has this commentary today on the California measure that will appear on the ballot in June 2010 as the “top-two open primary”.
Greenhut makes a number of errors.
1) Write-ins not allowed in general as a form of protest. They would still be permitted. At worst they might not be counted, if Section 8606 is enforceable.
In 2008, there were only 2 senatorial write-in candidates, who collectively received 19 “protest votes”. Only 6 of 20 senate races had a 3rd party or independent candidate.
For the Assembly, there were 2 write-in candidates, who collectively received 44 “protest votes”. Only 19 of 80 assembly races had a minor party candidates. 8 did not have a majority party candidate.
For Congress, there were 5164 write-in votes distributed among 16 candidates, almost 1/2 were cast for a Democratic write-in candidate in CD 19, where otherwise the Republican George Radonovich would have had no on-ballot competition.
It is dubious if a vote for a Democrat can be considered a “protest vote”. Under SCA 4/SB 6 it is much easier to qualify for the general election ballot as a write-in candidate than it is under the current system.
There were 32 3rd party and independent congressional candidates for 53 congressional races, and 9 races with only one major party candidate.
Since the Jones decision outlawed the blanket primary, the number of 3rd party candidates has been declining. Perhaps under the blanket primary, voters were willing to actually vote for a 3rd party candidate for positive reasons, rather than simply as a negative protest in the general election.
4) Treats candidates differently since it permits some to list their party preference in the June primary and not others. This is a disingenuous argument, since under the current system, those other candidates would not even be permitted to run in the primary, or registrants of their party permitted to vote, and would face the almost impossible job of qualifying as an independent candidate.
More importantly it is wrong. Prop 62 in 2004, would have restricted candidates to expressing preference for a “qualified” party. And because there would not be party nominees, it completely crossed out the 2% support for a statewide candidate as a qualification standard, and instead reduced the registration standard from 1% to 1/3 of 1% for maintaining qualification.
SCA 4/SB 6 permits a candidate to express the same preference on the ballot that he has expressed on his voter registration affidavit. If he discloses a preference for the Constitution Party, or the SalmonYoga, or Grange Party on his registration, he can have that preference shown on the ballot.
3) Shuts off all avenues to the ballot after March. The only current alternative “avenue” is to run as an independent. Given the qualifying standard for independents in California, that “avenue” is a pair of ruts that have largely been overgrown with trees. Independent candidates can get on the ballot as easy as partisan candidates can today. And believe it or not, the primary is not ordained to be in June. Remember that it was in March just a few years ago.
“Given the qualifying standard for independents in California, that “avenue†is a pair of ruts that have largely been overgrown with trees.”
Lower the petitioning requirements for independents. You don’t need to restrict voters to two choices on the ballot in the general election to accomplish that.
To Jim Riley, if there were bills in the California legislature to make it easier for independent candidates to get on the ballot, would you support them? I think you are crying crocodile tears. If you really support easier procedures for independent candidates, why aren’t you active in Texas to improve the horrible Texas ballot access procedures for independent presidential candidates, which have the earliest deadline in the nation by far and which require 80,778 signatures from the ranks of voters who didn’t vote in the primary?
It’s much easier for Jim to pound out pro-“top two” essays with his keyboard than to contact even a single Texas legislator.
This argument that the “top two” results in the election of more “moderates”– if it were true– would make the “top two” unconstitutional. That was one of the main problems that Justice Scalia had with the blanket primary in California Democratic Party v. Jones. The BP’s advocates stated that it would result in “a range of candidates who are all more ‘centrist.'”
However, one need only look at Louisiana’s experience with the “top two” to see that the “elect more moderates” argument is bogus. The 1991 runoff for governor featured a candidate who had already been tried for fraud versus an ex-leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The crook won with 61% (the national Republicans and the state GOP, incidentally, backed different candidates, neither of whom made the runoff).
The 1995 gubernatorial runoff pitted a white conservative Republican, Mike Foster, against a black liberal Democrat, Cleo Fields (now-US senator Mary Landrieu, a moderate Democrat, had finished third). Foster won the runoff with 66%.
Thus the “top two” makes it possible for extreme candidates like David Duke in ’91 and Cleo Fields in ’95 to get enough votes to reach the runoff, where they are badly defeated.
How about reading the top 2 WA opinion by the Supremes in 2008 about 1,000 more times ???
Since when does ANY subgroup of party hacks (a large or small part of ALL Voters) have a constitutional right to have a party hack nominee of such party hacks on the general election ballots (with or without the party hack label) ???
DOOM for the party hacks is coming — akin to the DOOM of the slave state regimes in 1864-1865 by the Union Army or the DOOM of the nazi regime in 1945 by the United Nations.
The Sun will continue to rise after the party hack primaries are put to death — and get buried along with divine right of kings, slavery, nazism, etc.
P.R. and A.V. — NO primaries are needed.
#5: Sounds like you need to read the Washington state “top two” ruling for the FIRST time.
The question was whether the candidates’ use of the parties’ names on the ballot infringed on the parties’ associational rights. The Supreme Court said that this aspect of the “top two” is constitutional on its face. However, the justices left the door open for an as-applied challenge and listed, in Footnote 11, other possible grounds for litigation against the “top two.”
Litigation has been ongoing, and there will be a trial in US district court in Washington in October 2010, thus adding to the uncertainty hanging over the California “top two” proposal when the voters go to the polls in June 2010.
The as-applied stuff is quite useless. Grasping at straws.
The party hacks of ANY party, large or small, have NO constitutional right to get THEIR party hack candidates on the general election ballots with THEIR party hack labels – as was made quite plain in the WA case opinion.
Prefer party XYZ stuff = meaningless stuff for the voters — who are allegedly aware of every word in the election laws (and all other laws) — something the party hack Supremes failed to notice.
How many candidates will have a prefer Hitler/nazi party, prefer Stalin/Lenin/communist party, etc. ???
Any nazis and communists complaining about having such a prefer label (aka FREE advertising – paid for by the taxpayers in making the OFFICIAL ballots) — even if the candidate is an FBI agent going after any or all nazis and communists ???
#7: Is it true that you refer to the 4th grade as “my senior year”?
#3 The California legislature has already passed SB 6 that reduces the qualifying standard in congressional races from between 5,700 to 13,500 to 40. All it needs to go into effect is for the voters to approve SCA 4.
Your SoS made an order of magnitude error in the number of voters registered in CD 38, claiming that there are only 25,018 registered voters. Even were that true California would require 751 signtures.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/running-for-office/2010/pdf/independent-congress-2010.pdf
To run for statewide office in 2010 as an independent it will require 173,041 signatures. Under SB 6 (already passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, ready to take effect when the voters pass SCA 4) that will be reduced to 65.