Politico has this lengthy article about the California U.S. Senate race, and the future of the top-two system.

The article quotes Abel Maldonado, one of the fathers of the system in California. He seems to now accept the idea that Republicans will never have a chance at winning a statewide race in California, and celebrates the fact that Republicans are permitted to choose between two Democrats. Yet Republicans won gubernatorial races in California in 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2003, and 2006, before there was a top-two primary.

On November 7, a California Superior Court Judge heard De La Fuente v Padilla. The hearing lasted an hour. The judge declined to order the state to list Rocky De La Fuente as a declared write-in candidate. California polls include a list of all the declared write-in candidates, which any voter may see if the voter is voting at the polls. The state argued that at this late date it would be impossible to re-issue the list.

Further court action may occur after the election, to order election officials to count write-ins for De La Fuente.

De La Fuente wasn’t put on the write-in list because, two weeks after he submitted his electors, the state informed him that some of the addresses of his presidential elector candidates on the declaration of candidacy forms are different than the addresses at which they are registered to vote. There is no law, regulation, or instruction, saying that the addresses must match.

It is absurd for the state of California to prevent De La Fuente supporters from having their votes counted for such trivial reasons, especially when there is a bigger flaw with the Republican list. One of the Republican candidates for elector is ineligible under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and the Republican Party did not submit any alternates. Also, the Secretary of State accepted nine presidential elector candidates from the American Independent Party who do not live in California. Finally, the Secretary of State accepted 108 presidential elector candidates for Donald Trump, even though California only has 55 electoral votes. So if Trump carried California, no one would know which electors had been elected.

The New Mexico Libertarian Party has never had a government-provided primary. The only minor party that has ever had its own primary in New Mexico is the Green Party, which had one in 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2004. The state requires a party to meet two tests to have a primary: (1) a vote of 5% for a statewide office; (2) registration of three-tenths of 1%.

New voter registration data shows that the Libertarian Party now meets the registration test, which it had not met earlier this year. If the party polls 5% for president on November 8, then it will be entitled to its own primary in 2018, assuming that its registration is still above three-tenths of 1% in January 2018. The Green Party also meets the voter registration test, and has met it for over twenty years.

The new registration data totals for all parties is: Democratic 599,813; Republican 399,930; Libertarian 5,714; Independent American 4,661; Green 3,891; Constitution 359; Better for America 121; Party for Socialism & Liberation 64; American Delta 12; independent 242,106; miscellaneous 32,813. These figures are not on the state’s web page, except that the state web page does have the Democratic and Republican totals.

The new percentages are: Democratic 46.52%; Republican 31.02%; Libertarian .44%; Independent American .36%; Green .302%; Constitution .03%; Better for America .01%; Party for Socialism & Liberation and American Delta under .01%; independent and miscellaneous 21.32%.

The February 2016 percentages were: Democratic 46.28%; Republican 31.13%; Green .31%; Libertarian .26%; Independent American .18%; Constitution .02%; independent and miscellaneous 21.82%.

Although the Independent American Party also meets the voter registration test, it has no candidates for statewide office this year, so it can’t possibly meet the vote test.