On May 16, the California Assembly passed AB 1419 unanimously. This is the bill that permits newly-qualifying parties to qualify as late as July, instead of January, in presidential election years. The bill now goes to the Senate.
The California Assembly did not bring up AB 1038 on May 16, but that bill could receive a vote on Monday, May 20. AB 1038 makes it illegal for a newly-qualifying party, or any party, to pay registration drive workers, directly or indirectly, on the basis of how many registered voters in any particular party they obtain.
Richard:
Assuming that the State Senate and Governor concur; 1) How will the new deadline date be computed? 2) Are there any other changes to the current Elections Code included? 3) Will there be an updated State-wide voter registration tally used or only the submitting party’s total membership as provided by the County Clerks to the Secretary of State Office, as of the dead-line date?
#1, the bill says the deadline for a party to qualify via registration is 135 days before the general election. The bill necessarily also tells election officials to do a new registration tally for that date.
California considers the filing date of an initiative petition to be when the county officials file their signature count with the Secretary of State (if a sample count qualifies an initiative, it is when the SOS has received sufficient estimated counts in excess of the qualifying threshold.
California applies the same rule to parties attempting to qualify by petition. That is why Americans Elect had to file so far in advance of the June primary. The new law really won’t help new parties qualify by petition that much.
#3, the bill moves the deadline for using the 10% petition method to qualify a party from September of the year before the election, to May of the election year. Generally the 10% petition is so difficult, no one even considers using it in any event. But Americans Elect used it in 2011. Moving the deadline so it is 8 months closer to the November general election is a huge improvement.
More important is the bill’s change on the deadline for groups that use the 1% registration method, moving the deadline from January to July of election years.
Richard:
Are you sure the deadline is moving to July? Because by my count 135 days is the Sunday before the last Saturday in JUNE!
#5, my comment #2 was mistaken. The bill provides the deadline is 123 days before the November election, not 135 days. The deadline is July, and I mislead you when I made my comment #2.
#3 The bill sets the deadline for a 10% petition to 135 days before the general election for a president-only party. The deadline for a 10% petition to participate in a primary is 135 days before the primary.
But the statute (and AB 1419) specifies that “signatures … shall be certified to and transmitted to the Secretary of State by the county elections officials substantially as provided for initiative petitions.”
It is the procedure for initiative petitions that specifies that the date the measure is filed with the Secretary of State is when the counties send the counted petitions to the SOS.
For 2014, the recommended deadline for a full count petition is Feb 28, 2014; or April 18, 2014 for a petition that qualifies based on a random count.
These are roughly five months later than if the party per attempting to qualify for the June 2014 primary.
Thank you Richard:
It would ‘ve been additionally helpful if the registration number had also been reduced in that bill to an amount of no more than 1,000 times the Electoral Vote from California.