On September 6, the Ninth Circuit set an oral argument date of November 13 for Independent Party v Padilla, 16-15895. The case will be argued in San Francisco. The issue is whether the California Secretary of State has a duty to tabulate how many California voters have written on their voter registration cards that they are members of the Independent Party. In California, a party that wants to get on the ballot by the registration method must ask the Secretary of State to tabulate how many registered members it has. If it has as many as approximately 60,000, then it becomes a qualified party.
In 2015, the Independent Party notified the Secretary of State that it wishes to qualify in California, but the Secretary of State refused to process the request. He believes that the name “Independent Party” is too similar to the name of the ballot-qualified American Independent Party. Section 5001 of the California Election Code says, “The designated name shall not be so similar to the name of an existing party so as to mislead the voters, and shall not conflict with that of any existing party or political body that has previously filed notice.”
In 1896 the California Supreme Court ruled that the National Democratic Party could qualify, even though the Democratic Party was already on the ballot. Courts in other states have routinely ruled that two parties may both be on the ballot, even though they both have a common word in their names. In 43 states, at one time or another, two parties have been recognized even though both of them shared a common word. It has been very common over the decades for various parties, all with “socialist” in their name, to co-exist.
The California Secretary of State, during the years the American Independent Party has been on the ballot, has permitted these groups to file to have their registrations tallied: Constitutional American, American National Socialist, American Nationalist, American Christian, Real American, American Eagle, American Centrist, American Resurrection, American Third Position, and American Concerned. Thus there doesn’t seem to be any general principle even in California that two parties can’t jointly share a common word. Nevertheless, the U.S. District Court upheld the Secretary of State in 2016, even though the Secretary of State did not submit any evidence that voters would be confused if the Independent Party were recognized.
In the last 40 years, ballot-qualified parties named “Independent Party” have existed in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, and Utah.
