Citywatch, a Los Angeles politics blog, carries this column by Joe Mathews. Mathews advocates restoring write-in space to the November ballot for California. In 2012 the legislature passed AB 1413, with no publicity, eliminating write-in space from the November ballot for Congress and partisan state office.
Mathews mentioned three California elections, where write-in had a role. But there are better ways of handling those situations than write-in voting.
1930: Charles Curry, Sr. died on October, 10 having been nominated by both major parties. Since he was the only candidate on the the ballot, the election was decided by write-ins. With two Republicans and two Democrats seeking votes, the deceased candidate’s son, Charles Curry, Jr. was elected with 43% of the vote. Under pre-2012 law candidates might have scurried about to qualify as a write-in candidate.
But more likely, we would have seen a spectacle such as happened in November 2010, when voters were urged to vote for Jenny Oropeza despite her being dead, even Secretary of State Debra Bowen was enlisted in this effort. If a dead person wins, there is a special election.
A better solution is to cancel the election if one of the candidates dies immediately before an election, and hold a special election immediately. This is done in Britain, and it works.
1946: The great Hiram Johnson died in 1945 with a little more than a year left on his term. William Knowland was appointed. Since no one other Johnson had ever been popularly elected to Johnson’s seat, California apparently did not know how to hold a senate special election.
In November 1946, William Knowland was elected to the full term under a conventional ballot, defeating among others Douglas “Wrongway” Corrigan. On the same day, Knowland was elected to fill the last two months of Johnson’s term, of which he had already server over a year as an appointee, in a special election in which write-in voting was used.
Under current law, a special election would be held with actual ballots. Better yet would be to actually hold the election soon after the vacancy occurs, avoiding corruption such as occurred in Blagobama in 2008.
When considering this election, recall “Wrongway” Corrigan was a candidate, and that write-in voting is the Wrong Way to handle this situation.
In 1982, Ron Packard was defeated in the Republican primary. He then ran as a write-in candidate in the general election. The district was so Republican that Packard and the Republican nominee finished 1-2, with the Democratic nominee finishing 3rd. Packard was elected with 36.76% of the vote, hardly a mandate.
It is quite likely that Packard would have finished in the top 2 in a Top 2 Open Primary, and would not have had to resort to a write-in campaign. In addition, a reasonable implementation of write-in voting forbids sore losers from being elected.
So the better solution is:
(1) Move the Open Primary from June to September, reducing the risk of something happening between the primary and secondary stages of the election.
(2) Permit election to occur in the Open Primary for state offices (and lobby Congress to permit the same to happen for congressional offices).
(3) If a candidate dies or is severely disabled, cancel the election, and start over with a special election.
(4) Permit write-ins in the general election, but forbidding declarations by sore losers.
(5) If the winner in secondary phase is held to less than 40%, start over with a new election.
ANY lawyers ever seen 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 (repeat 2) ???
Deny / abridge RIGHT to VOTE.
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@DemoRep: I’ve read Section 2 — particularly in light of the work of Asa Gordon, Executive Director of the Douglass Institute of Government and Chair of the DC Statehood Green Party Electoral College Task Force. See, for example:
http://greenpagesnews.org/2013/07/18/neo-redemption-gerrymandering-of-the-electoral-college/
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