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.

On September 10, the California Senate passed AB 681. It lets voters change their party at the polls on primary day, without having to fill out an entire new registration form. It also requires election officials to send two notices to independent voters several months before a presidential primary, letting voters know that they are registered independents, and warning them that certain parties may not necessarily let them vote in its presidential primary. The notice also includes a form that can be returned, letting the voter register differently.

The bill has an urgency clause. It must return to the Assembly for concurrence in Senate amendments.

On September 10, the California Assembly passed SB 696 by 64-14. All of the “No” votes were cast by Republicans. The bill requires the American Independent Party to change its name by October 29, or it will be disqualified from the ballot.

No state has ever before forced a ballot-qualified party to change its name. The bill is ambiguous as to whether “Independence” could be part of a party name. The bill bans the word “Independent” as part of a party name, and also says the ban applies to any derivative of the word “Independent.” Supporters of the bill say the intent is to also ban “Independence”.

At one time in the past, 47 states have had a ballot-qualified party with either “Independent” or “Independence” as part of its name, or all of its name. One of the most significant of such parties was the Independence Party, formed by William Randolph Hearst in 1906, which ran Congressman Thomas Hisgen for president in 1908.

If this bill becomes law and is not held unconstitutional, there will no longer be any excuse for California to bar independent candidates for Congress and partisan state office from having “independent” as their ballot label. When the ban on the word “independent” was challenged in court in Chamness v Bowen, the state’s defense was that if it allowed independent candidates to be “independent” on the ballot, that would cause confusion with the American Independent Party.