On July 21, the Peace & Freedom Party, the Libertarian Party of California, and the Green Party of Alameda County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Rubin v Padilla, 15-135, the case that argues that the U.S. Constitution does not permit states to exclude minor party candidates from the general election ballot. The text of the cert petition is 18 pages. The entire document seems lengthy because it includes the court decisions from the California state courts, which upheld the top-two system. Also the cert petition contains an appendix of data on California elections since top-two sent into effect in 2011.
If the other side wishes to respond, the response is due August 28.
I hope I’m wrong about Rubin v. Padilla but I see it as fatally flawed – lacking from the beginning a base drawn on the rulings in Lubin v. Panish , a unanimous United States Supreme Court decision which Peace and Freedom Party’s own Marge Buckley won to overturn filing fee restrictions on running for office.
Another opportunity Rubin seems to have missed is building on the recent and timely language and decisions which have come down in many of the marriage equality cases. 14th Amendment rights of equal treatment ought to have been a cornerstone of any Top Two challenge. The reasoning in marriage equality ought and could have largely been adapted in the attempts to assert the rights of equal treatment for all political parties not just for the candidates of the bi-partisan monopoly strangling the body politic.
We need to overturn Top Two restrictions on voters’ right to chose in every election stage from primary to general runoffs. As multi-party advocates we will probably be better off if the Supreme Court declines to take up Rubin v. Padilla.
This is just a cert petition. It isn’t expected to make the whole csse.
Top 2 stuff has been in the courts for about a mere TEN long years — how much WASTED time and money ???
What part of the USA Const says that X percent of the Voters in a FACTION have a right to have the FACTION’s candidates on general election ballots ???
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NO primaries.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Its called equal protection under the law, Demo Rep.
Sorry – NO percentages in 14th Amdt, Sec. 1.
HOWEVER there is the word EQUAL.
Thus IF a SCOTUS 5 have any brains, then they would declare that all ballot access schemes must be EQUAL for the individual candidates involved.
i.e. uphold the CA top 2 stuff — since the ballot access tests are equal in the CA primary and the CA general election
—BUT in effect declare the NON-equal stuff in about 46 States to be un-constitutional.
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NO primaries.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The California ballot labels are not equal. Only candidates who are registered in a qualified party get their party label on the ballot. All others must have “party preference: none.”
Back again to the point that each election is NEW.
i.e. EQUAL ballot labels.
ANY lawyers in CA with ANY EQUAL brain cells ???
That is because Debra Bowen misinterpreted the language of SB 6.
RE: RW comment 12:34 PM
It appears that the Cert Pet does NOT raise the UNEQUAL primary label point about candidates of *qualifying parties*.
Thus – one more likely LOSING case — due to MORON lawyers who must ATTACK ALL UNEQUAL stuff in the ORIGINAL complaint.
Must STOP having pre-school lawyers doing ballot access WAR cases in the courts.