Dan Schnur will run for California Secretary of State as an independent candidate in 2014. He was active in Republican Party politics in California in the past, and became a registered independent in 2011. See this story. He will be the first independent candidate for Secretary of State in the history of government-printed ballots in California, which began in 1891. Here is another story.
Schnur has been a supporter of Proposition 14, the top-two system, ever since it passed in 2010. I have tried to communicate with Mr. Schnur over the past year about the deficiencies of Proposition 14, including the point that Proposition 14 and its implementing legislation deprived independent candidates of the ability to have “independent” on the ballot. He and other independent candidates must have “no party preference” on the ballot, which is less appealing than “independent.” Research from around the U.S. was published in the August 1, 2013 B.A.N., showing that independent candidates who have the label “independent” do better than independent candidates who use other terms, such as “no party preference”, “non-partisan”, “unaffiliated”, or no label at all.
NO primaries.
Nonpartisan App.V. for all executive and judicial offices
There is nothing intrinsic to the provisions in the California Constitution that require an independent candidate in a Top-2 election to have “Independent” next to their name on the ballot.
His label in the primary should be “Prefers Bipartisan Establisment”
This could turn out to be an ugly spoiler scenario, tilting the election to the GOP. Whether or not that happens, a lot of people who favor him will be afraid to vote for him. He should therefore be a huge proponent of Approval Voting.
Independent is part of the name American Independent Party.
It would mix-up voters if the use of independent does not
limit itself to the American Independent Party.
Every time you post that message, you fail to comment on these points: (1) Americans Elect and American Independent Party are both on the ballot and you never claim that Americans Elect shouldn’t have been allowed to use that name; (2) it is still legal in California for an independent presidential candidate to have the ballot label “independent” and you never complain about that; (3) between 1968 and 2010, “independent” was allowed for all partisan office, yet the AIP was on the ballot, and in all those years the AIP never complained.
Recently, in doing archival research for other purposes, I ran across correspondence from 1976 and 1977 regarding possible name changes of the American Independent Party to the American Republican Party and of the (non-qualified) Constitutional Party to American Party or Constitutional American Party. Because seeing what party names were allowed wasn’t the purpose of my research, I just skimmed these documents and didn’t take detailed notes, but I believe they said that American Republican Party wouldn’t be allowed as likely to be confused with the Republican Party and that American Party would not be allowed as likely to be confused with the AIP, but that Constitutional American Party would be allowed.
Thus it seems both then and now with Americans Elect, the Secretary of State allows party names that overlap with the names of existing parties, but not party names that contain or are contained in the names of existing parties. By this reasoning, neither Independent Party nor Independent Democratic Party would be allowed as party names, but Independent Voter Party would.
Of course, whether “Independent” as a ballot label for independent candidates creates confusion is a different issue than “Independent Party” as the name of a party. If that were the case, then the American Independent Party shouldn’t have been allowed to use that name to qualify for the ballot in 1968, if “Independent” was already being used as a ballot label for independent candidates.