On August 26, the California Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 446 unanimously. This is a bill to make small improvements in the procedure for a group to become a qualified party. The bill lowers the petition to create a new party from 10% of the last gubernatorial vote to 3%. This may seem like a huge improvement, but it is not very meaningful because groups almost never use the petition procedure, because even as amended it would be so difficult. Instead they use the alternate registration test, which requires registration of .33% of the state registration total.

Also the bill clarifies the process for a group to file as a political body. A political body is a group that is trying to use the registration method to qualify. The bill was amended in the Senate Appropriations Committee so it now must return to the Assembly, assuming it passes the Senate. See the new text here. The amendments set forth procedures when a new political body is using the same name, or a similar name, to a past political body that never qualified.