The California Senate Elections Committee will hear SB 696 on Thursday, September 12, at 9 am in room 2040. This is the bill that forces the American Independent Party to change its name by October 29, 2019, or the party will be disqualified. Here is the Senate Elections Committee analysis.
The Federal Election Commission has just published “Combined Federal/State Disclosure and Election Directory 2019”, a free book that has contact information for election officials in all states. It can be ordered by phoning 800-424-9530. Press “2”. This is the first version since the 2017 version, which had 142 pages.
The Reform Party plans to hold a presidential nominating convention in March or April 2020. It will probably be either in Florida or North Carolina. At least two individuals, Joseph Wendt and Darcy Richardson, are seeking the party’s nomination. Both live in Florida.
An initiative is currently circulating in Florida to establish a top-two system for state and local office. According to this story, the initiative is being supported by Mike Fernandez, a wealthy individual who has already spent $6,000,000 on the petition. It has 621,000 signatures already, so is likely to qualify for the November 2020 ballot.
Initiatives in Florida cannot pass unless they get at least 60% of the vote. No top-two initiative has ever received as much as 60% of the vote, and no top-two initiative has ever passed except in Washington state in 2004 and California in 2010. Top-two initiatives have been defeated in Arizona, South Dakota, California in 2004, and in Oregon twice, in 2008 and 2014.
Here is the summary of the measure, as printed on petitions.
The Common Sense Party of California is trying to become ballot-qualified. According to the party’s press release, it already has over 10,000 registered voters. It needs registration equal to .33% of the total state registration in order to qualify. If it qualifies by October 2, 2019, its members may run for Congress and legislature in the March 2020 primary with the party label on the ballot next to their names. If it doesn’t qualify by then, but it does qualify by July 6, 2020, it can place a presidential nominee on the November 2020 ballot.
The law doesn’t permit anyone to know at this time exactly how many registrations the party needs. The .33% is applied to the state registration tally as of the deadline, which of course is in the future. But in October 2019 the requirement will probably be 70,000. When the percentage is applied, voters who are listed as having “unknown” registration are excluded from the denominator. “Unknown” voters are those who were registered automatically because they have drivers licenses or state ID cards, but they have never been asked to choose a partisan affiliation.
