On December 7, the Riverside County (California) finished the official vote count for the November 6, 2018 election. Libertarian Party member Jeff Hewitt, as expected, won for County Supervisor in the 5th district. Riverside County, like almost all California counties, only has five supervisors. The county has a population of 2,423,000 people, the eleventh largest county in the nation. The election is non-partisan, but Hewitt’s Libertarian Party membership was well-known.
The California Republican Party will choose a new state chair at its state convention in Sacramento, Feb. 22-24, 2019. Three candidates are running. One of them, Steve R. Frank, says he wants the California Republican Party to sue to overturn top-two. See this Politico story.
No federal court has ever upheld California’s top-two system. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Washington state’s top-two system does not violate freedom of association on its face, but it might as applied. That Supreme Court decision also said the Court was not deciding the ballot access issue.
A state court in California upheld the top-two system in Rubin v Bowen, but the decision of the State Court of Appeals is badly flawed, because the judges made three factual errors. (1) They said the purpose of the top-two system is to let independent voters vote in primaries. They did not know that the old California system in use 2001-2010 allowed independent voters to vote in all Democratic and Republican primaries for Congress and state office; (2) They said that California would be free to hold its general election in June and hold a run-off in November. They did not know about the 1997 unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Foster v Love that federal law does not permit this; (3) they said that the U.S. Supreme Court had already upheld top-two in 2000 in California Democratic Party v Jones. They did not notice that Justice Antonin Scalia wrote California Democratic Party v Jones, and yet when the U.S. Supreme Court partially upheld the Washington top-two law in 2008, Scalia dissented and said it violates freedom of association on its face.
On Wednesday, December 5, U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker heard arguments in Baber v Dunlap, 1:18cv-465. This is the case in which some Maine voters, and Congressman Bruce Poliquin, argue that ranked choice voting violates the U.S. Constitution. See this story. Judge Walker promised a ruling by next week. The plaintiffs argue that ranked choice voting discriminates against the voters who voted for candidates who placed third and fourth.
Prince Edward Island will hold a provincial parliamentary election in 2019. Polls show that it is possible the Green Party could win more seats than any other party. See this story.
The Ninth Circuit expects to set an oral argument in March 2019 for De La Fuente v Wyman, 18-35208. This is a Washington state ballot access lawsuit. Rocky De La Fuente won in U.S. District Court, in his challenge to a state law that requires petitioners for independent presidential candidates to publish a notice in a newspaper at least ten days before they start to petition. The notice must say where the petitioning will be carried out. The state is trying to overturn the U.S. District Court decision.
Also, the Ninth Circuit has moved the date for the oral argument in the Arizona Libertarian ballot access case away from February. It will be in March, or possible a later month. This is Libertarian Party of Arizona v Reagan, 17-16491, a challenge to the number of signatures needed to get a member of a small qualified party on his or her primary ballot. This is the law that kept all Libertarians off the November 2018 Arizona ballot. The law did not apply to the Green Party.
