The California Assembly Elections Committee will hear AB 446 on Thursday, April 29, in a meeting that starts at 10:30 a.m. The bill makes slight improvements to the process of qualifying a new party. It cuts the number of signatures for the party petition from 10% of the last gubernatorial vote to 3%.

The petition method for qualifying a new party in California is almost entirely unused. It is not mandatory, because a new party can also qualify by persuading .33% of the number of registered voters to join the party, and that is the method almost always used. So the party petition is just a back-up method. Even if the bill is signed into law, the 3% party petition would still be tied for the most difficult such petition in the nation, except that Minnesota and Rhode Island have a party petition of 5% of the last vote cast. Like the California party petition, the Minnesota and Rhode Island party petitions are also not mandatory; there are easier methods to create a new party in Minnesota and Rhode Island.

California AB 446 also gives a new party the freedom to use the name of an old, no longer existing party. The existing law says a party that expects to qualify by registration must file a statement of intent. The Secretary of State’s office has been interpreting that law to mean that if a group files the statement of intent (and many groups do), no future party can ever use the same name. The bill relaxes that rule, and says a name can be re-used after two years have gone by and the old name has not been used successfully. For example, if the bill is signed into law, a new party called the Reform Party could come into existence in California.