The April 21 San Francisco Chronicle has this article about Green Party candidate David Curtis and his attempts to be included in the April 22 debate for California Secretary of State.
UPDATE: BradBlog has also covered the story; see here. Thanks to Rick Hasen for that link.
Did the Field Poll include all candidates for Secretary of State?
It actually appears that MOE finished 3rd in the poll.
What is MOE?
If anyone is going to be commenting on the Chronicle’s website, please give the user called CnL2 a good thrashing of a rebuttal (You’ll see why if you read his/her comment). I want to do that myself but I’ve run into so any glitches and errors in trying to create an account that I’ve just given up. I guess they can’t all be as easy to comment on as Ballot Access News is…
Who is MOE?
Margin of Error.
They polled 212 voters before Senator Yee was arrested, and 292 after. There is no information available as to whether respondents to the poll were aware of Yee’s arrest.
It does not appear that the Field Poll actually named the other candidates. That is, their selection process was no better than that of the Sacramento Press Club.
41% of respondents had no opinion in the poll – and other responses are suspect. People are not focused on the race 2 months out, especially a down-ballot race.
Margin of Error (85% confidence level) was 6.5% prior to Yee’s arrest, and 5% following.
Summary: Flawed Poll is a more apt description than Field Poll.
BTW, one of the Republican candidates indicated difficulty in collecting in lieu of signatures that are only worth #0.26. In fact, when he ran for SOS in 2010, he was forced to run as a write-in candidate.
Clearly, any unfair burden falls on the candidate and those who support that candidacy; and not on minor political parties, who appear to be interested in protecting their privileged status.
Signatures requirements should be based on the available electorate (say 1/10 of 1% of gubernatorial voters in the area). An in lieu of fee should be based on the minimum wage and a reasonable collection rate (say 10 minutes per signature).
For statewide office this would be 10,036 signatures, or $13,382, or some combination of the two.
The average for senate would be 251 signatures or $335; for assembly 126 signatures or $167; and Congress 189 signatures or $252.
Jim Riley
It is not clear what you are stating. Are you stating the filing fee is not based on income
from the office held from the government?