On the evening of July 12, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He was asked what he thinks of the California top-two system. He said, “I am not a fan.” He then criticized it for locking minor parties out of the election itself. He also disparaged the idea that an election system should be designed to make an easier path for moderates to win. He said the election arena is for all points of view.
On July 12, the Ohio Secretary of State announced that the Libertarian Party petition for 2018 is valid. The Libertarian Party is now either a qualified party, or has a statewide nominee on the ballot even though the party is not a qualified party, in every state except Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington.
Petitioning for statewide nominees is proceeding in New York and Pennsylvania. Thanks to Bill Redpath for the Ohio news.
On July 12, U.S. District Court Judge James M. Moody issued a one-page order in Moore v Martin, e.d. 4:14cv-65. This is the case filed in 2014 to overturn the early petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates in Arkansas. Originally the judge had upheld the deadline, but then the 8th circuit had remanded the case back, and said that unless the state could show that it could not possibly check independent candidate petitions without a March deadline, the deadline should be invalidated.
On remand, the U.S. District Court held a trial and then struck down the deadline and said Moore had until May 1, 2018, to submit petitions. That decision was issued on January 25, 2018.
Afterwards, the plaintiff-candidate, Mark Moore, tried to comply with the new easier deadline, but did not successfully complete his petition by that new deadline. Then attorneys for the state tried to persuade the U.S. District Court to vacate the January 2018 decision. But on July 12, the U.S. District Court Judge refused to do that.
This same case is also pending in the Eighth Circuit, because attorneys for the state are also trying to persuade the Eighth Circuit that the U.S. District Court should not have given any relief to Moore, because he didn’t file a declaration of candidacy by the March deadline this year. The U.S. District Court had already rejected that request from the state.
The New York Times has this interesting story about ballot-qualified minor parties in New York. It focuses on the fairly rare instances when these parties have primaries in which all write-ins are counted (they are only counted if a particular type of petition has been filed in advance of the primary). It also says, near the bottom of the article, that write-ins are more common in primaries now than they were in the past. In the past, all New York state precincts used mechanical voting machines, and it was difficult for any voter to cast a write-in, when those machines were in use. A voter had to find a particular kind of lever on the machine to access the paper roll on which a write-in vote could be cast, and most voters didn’t know how to do that. But for the last decade, New York has used paper ballots, which makes it much easier to cast a write-in vote.
The San Jose Mercury-News has this op-ed by Political Science Professor Larry N. Gerston. It says the California top-two system is failing voters and that it hasn’t caused more moderate politicians to be elected.
