1. The LA Times has a weird archiving policy, often moving stories and opinion pieces almost immediately to “article collections” where they are separated from the posted comments.

   At least for now, the comments on the LA Times editorial are at “http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-ed-prop14-20100526/10”. The comments, which include several by Richard and one by myself, are overwhelmingly against Proposition 14.

   My point was that the LA Times editorial contradicts itself. It leads off by saying that third parties are valuable to society because while “[t]hey rarely succeed in electing a candidate to office, … they broaden political debate and thus test mainstream assumptions”. However, it then goes on to dismiss third parties complaints that Proposition 14 hurts them by saying that “they would go on losing in June just as they now lose in November”.

2. Who in CA has heard about P.R. and App.V. — with NO primaries needed ???

   Is CA a STONE AGE regime stuck in about 10,000 B.C. ???

   Regimes with P.R. —

   Germany, New Zealand, Israel, etc. etc. etc. — most of the *civilized* free world — quite unlike the STONE AGE minority rule gerrymander regimes in the U.S.A.

3. Ed Clark was a Libertarian that went with common sense. 5.5% in the CA Gov race and 1.01% nationwide for Prez in 1980. We need competition everywhere, not only to choose which bank we trust our money with or which restaurant to go to with the misses, but also in the political process.

4. Ed Clark got 1.065% for president in 1980.

5. How do the Libertarians decide which seats to contest?

   Between 2006, 2008, and 2010, they have contested a total of 38 Assembly districts, but 26 of those have been in only a single election; 7 in 2 elections, and 5 in all 3 elections.

   They are not contesting their two best districts in 2008 (AD 40 and AD 27). Their two best districts in 2006 (AD 43 and AD 49), have not been contested since.

   If they hold to form, then their best performances will be from among AD 3, 7, 16, 21, 22, 33, 47, 53, and 70.

6. Proposition 14 does not change the qualification standards for political parties. Under Proposition 14, the main purpose for party qualification will be to hold a presidential primary, so it would make sense to base party qualification on performance in presidential elections, not on the Insurance Commissioner race.

   But the intent of Proposition 14 is to leave the presidential election process unchanged. It in no way prevents the legislature from the reforming presidential election process by tying party qualification to performance in the presidential election, it was just outside the scope of the Proposition 14 reform.

   If parties qualified based on the performance of their presidential candidate, then California parties might be more inclined to respect the results of their own presidential primaries.

   The 2008 performance of the Peace & Freedom Party is undoubtedly due to the winner of their primary being their nominee for the general election ballot.

   Perhaps California could make the presidential primary a direct primary. If candidates like Obama, Barr, McKinney, and Keys wanted to run, they could qualify like any other candidate who doesn’t win their respective primary — as an independent.

7. Jim, how do you know the intent of the authors of Prop. 14? I asked one of the attorneys who drafted Prop. 14 why he did not imitate that 2004 version and keep the requirements roughly the same. He said, “I won’t tell you.” Then he laughed and said, “Maybe I’ll tell you after the election.”

   I asked Lt. Gov. Maldonado why his measure makes it tougher for parties to remain ballot-qualified, and he wouldn’t answer. Even after the radio host asked him again, he still wouldn’t answer.

   I asked former Senator Steve Peace, who was planning to get Prop. 14 on the ballot via the initiative process, why the measure does that, and he say he now regrets that it does that.

   So, I live here in California and have had face-to-face conversations with some of the people responsible for Prop. 14. They all agree that it makes it tougher for ballot-qualified parties to remain ballot-qualified, and they don’t defend it. Yet you, who has probably not set foot in California for a long time, and who has not had these conversations with the authors, presume to tell us all what their intent is.

8. There is nothing in SB 6 that supports the notion that candidates who have disclosed a preference for a “non-qualified” party on their signed voter registration affidavit, may not have that preference appear next to their name on the primary and general election ballots.

   If they said that they had no party preference, it would mean either that their signed voter registration affidavit was not correct, which might subject them to perjury charges; or that their sworn and notarized declaration of candidacy had false information.

   Since whether or not a candidate’s party preference appears on the ballot is a voluntary decision, the State of California may not compel a certain class of individuals to decide to not show that information, particularly since the whole purpose of Proposition 14 is to permit voters to vote for any candidate without regard to that candidate’s party preference.

   California may not make it more difficult to vote for a candidate on the basis of his party preference.

9. We have Jim Riley who reads SB 6 his way. Then we have the California legislative counsel, and the attorney who helped draft SB 6, and the attorneys for the man who hired the attorneys (Steve Peace), and Abel Maldonado’s staff person, and a consensus of the County Clerks of California (CACAO)(which discussed this at their meeting a few months ago) who disagree with Jim Riley. I guess I should just let it slide.

   One reason everyone in government in California agrees that SB 6 doesn’t let candidates choose any ballot label they happen to be registered into, is that it would make it possible for people to fill out a registration card with a humorous, or obscene, “party”; or a party label that is really really long, and then file for office in the primary and demand to have that label on the ballot. Washington state thought about this and bans obscene party labels, and labels that are more than 15 characters, but otherwise lets people choose any label they wish. California has no such protections.

10. #7 What is important is the legislative intent of the body that enacted the constitutional amendment. That intent is most clearly expressed in the second section of the resolution that proposed the constitutional amendment: Second—The People of the State of California hereby find and declare all of the following….

    Proposition 62 would have changed the qualification standard for political parties. Had it passed, the Natural Law and Reform parties might be ballot qualified. 1/3 of 1% of the 2002 gubernatorial vote was 24,922. At the 15-day report before the November 2004 election, the NLP had 28,779 registrants, and the Reform Party had 40,516.

    Proposition 14 does not change the qualification standard.

    Did you ask the authors of SB 6 why they did not keep the language of Proposition 62 as to what “No Party” meant for voters and candidates? Remember when you were waving the 2004 voter’s pamphlet around in the debate with Steve Peace before the Escondido Democrats? Do you think that any of them actually went and re-read their voter’s pamphlet from 2004? But I did. I know what it says.

    Under Proposition 14, what will it mean if a party is “qualified”:

    a) A qualified party can hold a presidential preference primary, and continue to ignore the results;

    b) A qualified party can place nominees on the presidential ballot;

    c) A qualified party will be able to elect party officers in the primary;

    d) A qualified party will be able to have a sample ballot distributed to its registrants as part of the voter’s pamphlet;

    e) Qualified parties will have a check off box on the voter registration affidavit. Persons who prefer “non-qualified” parties will be able to disclose their party preference as a write-in.

    Proposition 14 eliminates any special status for “qualified” parties relative to candidates for statewide, congressional, legislative, and the board of equalization. This is a key distinction distinction between Proposition 14 and Proposition 62.

    The intent of Proposition 14 is to not change the current presidential election process. It doesn’t say that such change would be bad or good. It is officially agnostic. Since Proposition 14 greatly reduces the qualification standard for independent gubernatorial candidates, it may inspire legislation or litigation that will do the same for independent presidential candidates.

    Elections Code 5100 can be rewritten to be based on the presidential elections. Since there is only one presidential race, and turnout is higher in presidential elections, the percentage thresholds could be reduced.

    There is no reason that by-petition candidates for president need be denied party identification on the ballot.

    No qualified party will lose its qualified status as a direct result of Proposition 14 prior to November 2014. There is time to responsibly change the qualification standard for political parties to more closely align with the effect of “qualification”.

11. #9 Washington does not have party registration for voters. The limitations on party preference for candidates are in regulations promulgated by the Secretary of State.

    California can certainly pass legislation limiting the length of names that a party can adopt. In the past, the following parties have attempted to qualify, United Conscious American-Africans for Peace, Success, and Fairness Party; United Conscious Builders of All Americans Equal Dream Party; and No More Black Holocaust and Reparations for Origians Now Party. It appears that the length of the party name is a non-issue, or certainly not one that the legislature has been concerned enough to address directly.

    “British Reformed Sectarian Party” and “Official Monster Raving Loony Party” might be considered to be humorous names. Florida and Britain have not seen a need to ban their use.

    California may regulate in a content-neutral manner the names of political parties that voters may disclose a preference for on their voter registration affidavit. But they can’t do so in a way that violates the 1st and 14th Amendment. And California can’t make up an interpretation of SB 6 that fits some other concern.

    I think California would get laughed out of court if they contended they were suppressing a candidate from expressing a preference for the Constitution Party out of concern that it might be obscene.

    Ask the attorney who helped draft SB 6, ask Steve Peace, ask Abel Maldonado’s staff person why they did not include anything like Elections Code Sections 337.3 and 359.5(a)(2) of Proposition 62.

    Proposition 62 did tie the party names that could appear on the ballot to being “qualified” parties. Proposition 14 (and SB 6) do not.

    We are fortunate that Proposition 62 did not pass. If the US Supreme Court had ruled on the basis of Proposition 62, it might have come to a different conclusion. Washington won because they convinced the judges that a preference for a political party was a matter of personal expression by the candidate. Use of the name of a political party when names are restricted to parties that had been qualified to nominate might not. It could be seen as subterfuge to limit party names to those that previously had nomination rights, if the name did not indicate nomination.

12. Richard:

    Can the results of the presidential and vice-presidential elections be utilized to maintain ballot status for the smaller parties?

13. No. Section 5100(a) says a party is qualified if at the last gubernatorial election one of its statewide candidates got 2%. Votes cast in presidential years don’t help.

14. Every election is NEW and has ZERO to do with ANY prior election stuff — regardless of the party hack Supremes and their JUNK / irrational ballot access cases since 1968 — i.e. ALL of them starting with Williams v. Rhodes.

    Every about 100 years the party hack Supremes somehow get some brain cells and over-rule their earlier JUNK.

    See the Erie case in 1938 overruling dozens of opinions going back to about 1841.

15. #13 I interpreted Phil Sawyer’s question to be whether the law could be modified.

    After Proposition 14 is implemented, the main effect of ballot qualification will be on presidential elections. A voter who has disclosed a preference for a political party will be able to vote for any candidate in primaries for statewide, congressional, and legislative elections, but will be restricted to voting in a party primary for president. Qualified parties will be permitted to have presidential nominees placed on the ballot.

    It simply is not logical to base qualification for presidential elections on performance in the Insurance Commissioner race.

    So California could change Section 5100 to be tied to the presidential election. Since there is only one race, and turnout is higher in presidential elections, the percentages could be decreased.

    When Proposition 14 passes and reduces the qualification standard for independent gubernatorial candidates to 65, I expect a legal challenge will be made against the standard of 173,000+ for independent presidential candidates, based on the logic of the case in Idaho.

    But I don’t see any reason that by-petition candidates could not have party affiliation appear on the ballot, if the elector candidate had disclosed a preference for the party on their voter registration.

16. How about a million word website about (1) the current law for candidates for partisan and nonpartisan offices and major and minor parties and (2) the law IF Prop 14 is enacted ??? — with ALL the combinations and loophole machinations ???

    A Gordian Knot in CA — waiting to be given the Alexander the Great treatment ??? Think chop-chop.

17. Richard: Thank you for answering my question. That is how I was thinking it probably was but I could not remember for certain.

    Jim: My question was in regard to how the law is now. However, I am indeed very interested in whether the law could be modified – especially if Propostion 14 passes. I have to wonder how difficult it will be to change the law; and, it does not seem fair to me that the people who put Proposition 14 on the ballot did not address that problem in advance. Oh well, the universe is not fair (as it says in at least one of the “Dune” novels).

18. I’d like to see Proportional Representation with Majority Allotment.

    Examples:

    #1
    A 51% (E)
    B 30%
    C 10%
    D 9%

    #2

    A 40% (E)
    B 30% (E)
    C 20% (E)
    D 10%

    In example #1, candidate A got a majority and gets 1 vote. In example #2, candidate A got a plurality and anyone else who got 15% would be elected with him (B and C), but all 3 get a weighed vote according to their popular vote.

19. #17 Here is why I think that they didn’t change party qualifications in SB 6.

    If you look at Proposition 62, which was defeated in 2004, you will see that voters who had registered with a non-qualified party were explicitly treated as having “no party”. The only place they weren’t treated that way, was for purposes of qualifying as a party. So if you had registered with the Reform or Constitution or Natural Law or Salmon Yoga parties, the registration records would retain that record. But for all other election purposes you would be regarded as having “no party”.

    If a voter became a candidate his party designation on the ballot would be that of the party that he was registered with, or “No Party”, which really would mean that he was not registered with a “qualified” party. The party had the formal option to let registered voters to use the party name on the ballots. This would have been a global decision, so it couldn’t be used to control nomination. So the Democratic Party could let all Democrats run as Democrats or force them to run as ” “. Obviously this decision had to be made by an actual party recognized by the State.

    So Proposition 62 strongly maintained the concept of a qualified party, since only candidates affiliated with a qualified party could have that affiliation appear on the ballot. But since they couldn’t win qualification for the party by success in the general election, there was a risk of political parties becoming non-qualified and most candidates being forced to run as “No Party”. So they dropped the qualification standard. In 2004, the Reform Party would have re-qualified based on the reduced standards of Proposition 62, and the Natural Law Party could have maintained its qualification (though by then, they probably were no longer interested in doing so).

    If Proposition 62 had been approved, and then gone through the court system, it might not have been upheld by the US Supreme Court. Because of the ties to qualified parties, there would be too much risk of the party name suggesting that candidates represented the party or were its nominees.

    Washington state convinced the majority of the US Supreme Court that a political party preference is just a matter of personal expression by a candidate. The fact that a candidate liked the Democratic Party did not mean the party endorsed his candidacy, but simply was a shorthand for the candidate’s beliefs.

    So far, Washington has permitted candidates to choose their party preference, limited to number of words, etc. The Secretary of State has proposed changes to statute which would regulate this further. For example it would provide that a minor party must have 100 members, a name, and a formal structure, such as bylaws and party officers. This would ensure that a candidate expressed a preference for a political party, rather than a political ideology or some other object, whether concrete or abstract.

    So back to California and Proposition 14. The authors wanted to take advantage of the Washington litigation. So they recast party status on the voter registration from “declaration of intent to affiliate with the party at the next primary” to “disclosure of party preference”.

    When the political parties sue after Proposition 14 is passed, California is going to argue that a party preference is simply protected free speech, and presented to voters on the ballot as matter of self-disclosed information by the candidate. They will argue that California’s interest is that the information is accurate (it matches what is on the voter registration, doesn’t change between the primary and the general election). In addition, the SOS will have a 10-year party registration history on its web site, to assist voters in ferreting out ringers.

    The political parties are going to argue that party preference is a subterfuge, that because it is tied to “qualified” parties. The State is going to argue that the law doesn’t say that. They will point out that Proposition 62 did have an explicit link, and the drafters knew how to place such a link in the law, but deliberately did not do so.

    The link simply is not anywhere in SB 6, A voter’s party preference is what he disclosed on his voter registration. It is clearly legal for a voter to be affiliated with a non-qualified party. And a candidate’s voter preference is the same as he disclosed on his voter registration.

    But even if there were a link, it would not matter. If party preference is simply a matter of personal political expression, California has absolutely know rational justification for limiting personal political expression to popular beliefs. It can successfully argue that a qualifying standard of 80,000+ registrants is justified since the state has to provide a primary election, it wants to provide a rationale for the outrageous qualification standard for independent candidates, and they want to avoid ballot crowding.

    But under the terms of Proposition 14, this doesn’t matter since they only have to provide presidential primaries, and there is no longer an outrageous qualification standard. Forcing a candidate who has a party preference to indicate that he has none such that he is discouraged from running is not a lawful means of addressing the issue of ballot crowding, especially when there may be 20 or more candidates on the ballot.

    So eventually, California may need a split qualification standard:

    (1) The only legitimate interest of California in regulating party preference is to make sure that the parties actually exist, the names are of reasonable length and not confusing, obscene etc. A quire modest membership threshold can ensure that the party actually exists. As a legal matter, California doesn’t care whether a candidate prefers a less popular party.

    (2) But it might require a higher threshold in order to hold a presidential primary and presidential ballot access for a small party. It is too expensive to hold a statewide primary for a party with 100 members. But California could permit petition-qualified candidates to carry a party affiliation on the ballot. So let’s say you set a reasonable standard (say 5000 signatures) to gain access to the presidential ballot, then a party with 100 members would be able to have its candidate on the ballot, assuming it could get the signatures from other voters.

    There might be another threshold for parties being able to have their endorsements distributed on the sample ballot. It could depend at what point this become economically unjustifiable.

    But these changes need some thought.

    Proposition 14 will take effect on January 1, 2011. Parties that maintain their qualification based on this fall’s election will retain their qualified status until after the 2014 election. So there is time for the legislature to act (and respond to litigation).

    Statutes that are passed by the initiative process, have some protection from being modified by the legislature. Otherwise, the voters could pass a law, and the legislature could immediately undo it. And it would also encourage putting into the Constitution matters that really should be in statute.

    But SB 6 is an ordinary bill passed by the legislature, whose implementation is contingent on approval of Proposition 14, which formally just amends a small section of the Constitution. Since SB 6 doesn’t change ballot qualification standards, there is no reason that the legislature can’t change it. Reducing the ballot qualification threshold in no way harms the ability for a voter to vote for any candidate regardless of party affiliation.

    And even SB 6 had changed the ballot qualification threshold, there is nothing that would prevent further changes by the legislature (or the initiative process).

20. Jim: That is taking a very long way around the barn to come to your conclusion that it is okay to discriminate against the smaller parties. In reality, it is not okay to do that (legally or morally).

21. #20 Proposition 14 reduces the number of signatures for a candidate to get on the statewide ballot to 65, from the current 173,000+. Candidates registered with small parties that are currently “unqualified” will be able to have that preference shown on the ballot.

    Obviously the current political parties, want to keep their monopoly on ballot access.

    Proposition 14 eliminates discrimination on the basis of party preference of both voters and candidates.

22. Prop 14 YES will be a good thing. “parties” have become corrupt…this prop. will actually help the “unknown”….without having to sell out to the “party!” Don’t you see, we americans are sick of political parties. This will really be a better move for people that really want to represent “the people.”

23. There is nothing unknown about Prop. 14. The system has already been tried for the last 35 years in Louisiana, which has far more corruption among its politicians than California does. One ex-member of Congress from Louisiana, and one ex-Governor of Louisiana, are in prison for corruption.

    Political science professor Seth Masket wrote in his book “No Middle Ground” (published in 2009, written in 2008), “An organized party system is an enormous aid to the have-nots, a finding that has been echoed in other research…It is no coincidence that New Deal-style legislation largely failed in California during the cross-filing regime. Advances on civil rights, education, and other issues that gave California its liberal reputation did not begin until after the early 1960’s, after the death of cross-filing…Those who rail against intractable parties should remember that the alternative is not necessarily sanity and moderation, but more often corruption and unaccountability.”

24. #23 When was Duke Cunningham released?

25. #24: Cunningham was released at about the same time as Jim Brown, Louisiana’s former secretary of state and insurance commissioner.

    Or was it at the same time as David Duke?

    California has a much greater population than Louisiana.

    The five words most feared by a Louisiana politician: “Will the defendant please rise.”

26. #25 Wasn’t David Duke, Louisiana’s version of California’s Tom Metzger?

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