On September 10, the California Senate passed AB 1461 by 25-15. Later on the same day, the Assembly passed it. It provides that California adult citizens who obtain a drivers license, or a state ID card, or who renew those, or who file a change of address in connection with those two pieces of ID, will be automatically registered to vote. However if the individual says he or she does not want to be registered to vote, there will be no automatic registration.
Although such individuals will later be asked to make a choice about partisan affiliation, individuals who don’t respond will be registered with a partisan affiliation of “unknown”. Section 2265 says that for purposes of determining whether a party has enough registered voters to qualify, the percentage calculation won’t include the “unknown” voters. The law currently requires a party to have .33% of the total state registration in order to qualify or remain qualified, but when the percentage is calculated, “unknown” voters will be excluded from the denominator.
It doesn’t go into effect until California complies with federal law to have a statewide database.
The only apparent reason to maintain the current qualification standards is to sabotage Top 2.
Obvious part of the Donkey master plan to have Donkey control FOREVER.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Two things are worth mentioning. (1) Party ballot status in not the only thing affected by greatly increasing the number of voters. This also impacts the numbers of signatures required for getting initiatives and referendums on the ballot, and possibly other provisions that I’m not aware of. (2) The language that excludes “unknown” preference voters from the denominator for staying on the ballot doesn’t solve the problem for petitions to start a new party, and also doesn’t affect a different requirement (which parties rarely fail to meet unless they are deliberately disbanding) that even if you meet the vote test to stay on the ballot, you still have to have registration equal to at least 1/15 of 1 percent.
The bill’s author and other legislators are aware of at least the first problem and maybe the second. They have said they plan to continue fixing them in future legislation. We’ll see. The fact that they did as much as they did at the last minute is no accident. It’s the result of very effective work by representatives of the small parties.
The number of signatures needed to get an intiative or referendum on the ballot is a percentage of the last gubernatorial vote, not a percentage of the number of registered voters.
Also, it seems to me it will be easier for initiatives to get on the ballot because the validity rate of petitions will be higher.
As to the 1/15th of 1% of registered voters that all parties must have to remain on the ballot, that test is only applied once every four years, in November of gubernatorial years (otherwise Americans Elect would not have been ballot-qualified during 2014), and it seems obvious that if the party was on the ballot at the beginning of a gubernatorial year, when it had to have .33%, the odds that the same party would have less than .07% at the end of the same year are extremely low.
Thank you for the correction on initiatives and referendum petitions. Petitions to recall local officials are based on the number of registered voters (EC 11221). You are probably right about the validity rate of signatures.
Richard:
With the substantial increase in registered voters over the next few years wouldn’t this also have the effect of making it far more expensive for candidates for ANY office in California. They would be be forced to spend much more money on mailers, since they wouldn’t have any idea which of the newly registered voters were really interested in voting and not just forced to be included on the voter rolls?