The Los Angeles Times has this on-line article about Paul Merritt, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in California in 2016. California publishes a Voters Pamphlet that is mailed to every registered voter. Candidates for U.S. Congress are permitted to write a campaign statement that is published in the pamphlet, although the candidate must pay for this service. In 2016 Paul Merritt paid for a statement which said in the heading that he is an independent candidate.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla censored out those words, and didn’t even tell Merritt what he had done. Merritt has charged that his free speech was violated, and also his due process was also violated. The lawsuit is still in U.S. District Court. The Los Angeles Times story is the first publicity his lawsuit has had.
Must sue for BIG $$$ damages — to bankrupt the hacks.
The twilight of the American republic is nigh.
There is a new way for us voters to collaborate under pure proportional representation where teamwork has generated a unity phenomena that’s sweeping the world.
Many political candidates cannot imagine working across party lines and with independents because the divisive nature generates fighting, polarization, censorship and dysfunctional symptoms which is the norm.
The United Coalition has been able to collaborate with both candidates and voters using pure proportional representation for more than twenty-two consecutive years and it works fine.
http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html
“The twilight of the American republic is nigh.” – Don Wills
Well, at least the California Republic anyway!
The California Constitution says that “all voters may vote at a voter-nominated primary election for any candidate for congressional and state elective office without regard to the political party preference disclosed by the candidate or the voter”. The Constitution further provides that a candidate may have their party preference or lack thereof appear on the ballot for a voter-nominated office.
California statute and practice for the past century makes it clear that a voter’s party preference is what he writes on his affidavit of voter registration. Immediately before the June 2010 primary at which voters adopted Proposition 14, the SOS sent a memo to county election officials emphasizing the distinction between a voter who Declined To State (DTS) their intent and a voter who expressed their intent to affiliate with a nonqualified party.
California made no distinction between a voter who intended to affiliate with the Democratic, Green, or Coffee party. The intent expressed by the voter was aspirational: “If the Democratic/Green/Coffee” party has a primary, I intend to vote in it”. The Democratic or Green party might find itself abandoned by its voters and disqualified from having a primary. The Coffee Party might have gained enough registrants to qualify to have a primary. Or a qualified party might decline to have a primary, as Americans Elect Party chose not to. That California does not tabulate the number of voters who have expressed a preference for some parties, does not mean that they don’t have a preference for those parties. If a ticket-taker does not count the number of persons who entered a theater who had green eyes, does it mean that there are no green-eyed persons in the audience? Of course not.
When a party became non-qualified, its voters continued to have the same intent to affiliate (or party preference). If not, the Peace&Freedom Party might not have requalified after having become non-qualified. There must surely still be registrants who have a preference for the Natural Law Party, and who have not changed their registration since 2006, when there were 22 thousand. As far as anyone else other than the voter their self knows, they intend to vote in a NLP presidential primary in 2020.
The preamble of Proposition 14, expressing legislative intent of the voters in adopting Top 2, said that party affiliations would be converted to party preferences. The preamble also said that SB 6 implemented the constitutional amendment. SB 6 clearly made a distinction between DTS voters, who were converted to No Party Preference (NPP), and voters who had a party affiliation whether Democratic, Green, or Coffee, which was converted to a party preference for the same party.
The preamble of Proposition 14 also said that the intent was to comply with the SCOTUS decision in the Washington Top 2 case. In that case, Washington AG Rob McKenna successfully argued that a party preference on the ballot was personal political speech by the candidate (and protected by the 1st Amendment), and did not indicate support by the political party. On remand, the issue for the District Court was simply to decide whether voters would be confused by a label on the ballot. The district court determined that voters would not, a decision upheld by the 9th Circuit. The SCOTUS declined to re-review the case.
Even if California wanted to restrict a candidate to expressing a preference for a so-called qualified party, it would violate the 1st Amendment. Once California opened its ballot to personal political speech, it can not discriminate. California would be laughed out of court if they argued that they could restrict the expression of views because they are less popular, or would confuse voters by exposing them to unorthodox viewpoints that were not endorsed by the State, or that if candidates could express their true political beliefs it would lead to ballot crowding.
The purpose of Proposition 14 was to extirpate the role of “qualified” parties to nominate candidates and have a state-funded segregated partisan primary. It is absurd to say that the parties are participating in the primary if a candidate happens to prefer the party. That is an activity of the candidate, not of any party. That “qualified” parties may support candidates is unremarkable. Non-qualified parties, and other groups may do the same.
The California Constitution states that the State may not have regard for, (take into account, make distinctions based on, or discriminate on the basis of) the party preference of candidates or voters. If a voter wishes to find a candidate who shares their political beliefs, they could be denied that ability based on State action. If a candidate wishes to express their true political beliefs which they previously expressed on their affidavit of voter registration, (which they signed to certify its correctness and truthfulness, subject to prosecution for perjury), they could be denied that ability, and forced to have a falsehood expressed on the ballot presented to voters.
ANY election *reform* must be super SIMPLE for a majority of the simple minds on each appeals court to understand — esp. 5 of the 9 SCOTUS hacks.