On March 16, a Florida circuit court upheld the 2011 law that says no one may seek the nomination of a political party if that person was a member of another qualified party in the preceding year. Argenziano v Browning, 2011-ca-3484. The plaintiff is Nancy Argenziano, who accidentally registered as a member of the Independent Party last year. She wants to run in the Democratic Party primary for Congress this year. See this story.
Unfortunately, the Florida Democratic Party refused to join Argenziano’s lawsuit, even though the story alleges that the party has no objection to Argenziano’s candidacy. The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1986 in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that it would violate a political party’s freedom of association for a state to say that the party may not nominate a non-member. Laws like the Florida law have been declared unconstitutional in Colorado and New Mexico, but in the Colorado and New Mexico cases, it was the political party that brought the lawsuit.
The Constitution Party of Florida has recruited someone to run for a partisan office this year, who would also be barred by the new Florida law. The Constitution Party is thinking about bringing its own lawsuit on behalf of itself and its desired candidate, and that proposed lawsuit would have a better chance of winning.
Each election is NEW and has about ZERO to do with any event since Adam and Eve.
A feature of the Top 2 Open Primary in California is that they have eliminated the disaffiliation rules. Instead of trying to regulate affiliate, they simply report a candidate’s affiliation history over the previous 10 years.
#2, except they won’t do that if the candidate is, or has been, a member of an unqualified party.
How does this affect Gary Johnson?
#4, the Florida law doesn’t apply to presidential candidates.
#3 Is there any possible way to interpret CC/ROV Memorandum 10086 (March 9, 2010) as having any meaning other than that voters could affiliate with a non-qualified party?
Before Proposition 14, voters could affiliate with non-qualified or qualified parties, but were treated differently based on which party they were affiliated with. That is, the State of California had regard for or made distinction based on party affiliation.
The intent of Proposition 14 was to eliminate any distinction, discrimination, or regard on the basis of which party a candidate or voter preferred.
Proposition 14 stated that it was the intent that existing party affiliations be converted to party preferences. SB 6 (Elections Code 2151(d)) specified the conversion process. Is there anything that would lead you to believe that a voter who had expressed an intent to affiliate with a political party, qualified or non-qualified, would not have their registration converted to a party preference for the same party?
You watch the registration statistics. Was their any dip in the overall 100,000 voters who had been affiliated with non-qualified parties, and now have a preference for those same non-qualified parties.
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