On May 16, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Stengel held a hearing in Constitution Party v Aichele, e.d. 12-cv-2726. The purpose of this hearing was to decide exactly what rules apply this year for the minor party plaintiffs who already prevailed against the state’s policy of putting them at risk of paying up to $110,000 if their petitions are challenged.

The attorney for the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties argued that because the law has been held invalid, the relief should be that the parties are put on the ballot automatically. The state argued that the parties still need to submit petitions. If the state prevails, though, the state elections department will have the work of checking the signatures, since the challenge procedure is void. The Elections Department has never before tried to validate signatures itself and may have trouble doing that. The state elections office is already under-staffed.

A decision is expected soon.

This Orange County Register story says that it is considered likely that the November 2016 ballot in California’s 46th U.S. House district will have no option except to vote for a Democrat. The California top-two system is responsible for this limitation on voter choice. Although other U.S. House districts in California have also had only Democrats on the ballot in November, this will be the first time that such a U.S. House race in Orange County has had this characteristic. Orange County has substantially more registered Republicans than Democrats. In November 2014 the Republican who was on the November ballot, Neel Kashkari, outpolled Jerry Brown by 344,817 to 275,707 within Orange County. Thanks to Carla Marinucci for the link.

The only California U.S. Senate debate that was open to all ballot-listed candidates was held on Sunday, May 16. Here is a 3-minute television news report about the debate, from KSBW in Monterey.