California Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Made it Somewhat Easier for a New Party to Get on the Ballot

On October 7, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 446, which would have made it somewhat easier to qualify a new party. Here is the veto message, which exhibits ignorance. Governor Newsom seems to think that reducing the number of signatures to qualify a new party from 10% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 3%, would create lots of new parties. But even a 3% petition would be 373,928 signatures. Probably if he had signed the bill, no new parties would have qualified in several decades by the petition method. The petition has been at 10% since 1937, and in all the 84 years since then, only twice has any party used the petition method (Independent Progressive in 1948 and Americans Elect in 2011).

Very few groups use the petition to qualify. Instead they use the alternate registration method, which requires registration of .33% of the total state registration. The bill did not fundamentally change that route to the ballot, so the practical impact of the veto is not much.

The veto message correctly says that when new parties get on the ballot in California, that increases the burden on county election officials because it forces them to print up more types of primary ballots. The answer to that objection, which is a reasonable objection, is to provide that new or small parties should not have a primary. Very few states provide small qualified parties with their own presidential primaries (which are the only kind of partisan primaries still in existence in California). In the past, bills have been introduced to provide that small parties should not have their own primaries in California, but those bills did not pass.


Comments

California Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Made it Somewhat Easier for a New Party to Get on the Ballot — 12 Comments

  1. I don’t think it was ignorance on Newsom’s part, nor did he intend the “crowded ballots” objection reasonably, but rather it was a half-assed front story on his part to try and hide the real reason he vetoed it: he, like many other “Democrats”, do not support free, fair, and representative elections as much of the rest of the world knows them (multiple parties with representation, open debates, fair ballot access laws, etc). This also applies to many Republicans as well. Both ruling parties have made their contempt for free and fair elections quite well known during the past few decades.

  2. NOOO extremist primaries.
    —-
    Equal nom pets – 1 voter forms – secret

    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  3. California also has primary elections for political officers. They could solve that problem by having a separate election in odd years with an all-mail ballot in odd years. Mail out the ballots to all registrants and collect the returned ballots, and hand them over to the parties. Parties could count the votes by hand or pay for them to be counted. Parties such as the Libertarians could have an invitation to party meetings instead.

    There is no need for requiring more than a modest number of registrants (50 or 100) to establish existence of a political party. Eliminate write-in party affiliation and simply have the founders of a party to present a petition consenting to having their party preference changed.

    The presidential primary could be conducted like in 2000. The results are not binding.

  4. Party gangs — have own PRIVATE elections – paid for ONLY by party hacks —

    as with all other PRIVATE groups.

    Technical NOOO need for any party gangs/elections —

    the PUBLIC elected legislators of each party are the party leaders.

  5. It seems in this country the SYSTEM is using 1960’s tactics and that was used to to eliminate both extremes of the political spectrum and dissenters. A bullet is the next weapon = George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, Kennedys, Martin Luther King, etc.

  6. See the many political MURDERS in 1918-1940

    — esp in the later 1939-1945 Axis regimes and the commie Russia/USSR regime.

  7. Don’t print names on ballots. Use the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot format. Print the offices and one blanks space for the voter to fill in for each office. All ballot access laws are voter censorship laws.

  8. By eliminating democrats and their families we cleanse the homeland and make the world BETTER.

  9. Newsom is afraid that “lowering the political party qualification” threshold will allow for more LIBERAL political parties in CA, and syphon off voter registrants from the Democratic Party! Even though the Democratic Party has 43% of CA registered voters (and climbing!), and the Republican Party in CA has 24% and dropping, Newsom does NOT LIKE political parties to “compete”. He is such an idiot, he even vetoed the bill that would ahve dis-qualified the MIS-LABLED “American Independent” Party-which is NEITHER (that party is so far to the right, it makes the Republicans in CA look LIBERAL!)

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