On January 30-31, the Institute of Government Studies held a public forum on the 2014 California election. One of the panels was “The Top-Two: So What?”, which featured one political scientist and three campaign consultants. Amy Walter, who attended the forum, here reports on that panel’s finding, with most attention to what Eric McGhee, the political scientist on the panel, said. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

McGhee did mention briefly that the top-two system has virtually ended the ability of minor party members to campaign in the general election season, but Walters did not mention that in her story.

On February 6, Jill Stein spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to say she is exploring whether to seek the Green Party presidential nomination. That attracted a good amount of publicity. However, many of the stories had factual errors. The Bloomberg story misspelled Ralph Nader’s surname as “Nadar”. National Public Radio said if Stein runs, that would be only the second Green Party presidential run. Here is one of the more accurate stories. The Boston Globe story said she was on the ballot in 2012 in “more than 30 states”, which is true, but a better story would have been more precise, and would have said she was on in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. Here is a better story from The Times of Israel.

None of the news stories mentioned that the Green Party is already on the ballot for 2016 in states containing 55% of the national electorate, and this percentage will increase as the party completes more petition drives during 2015 and 2016.

Utah has been the only state in which it is impossible for a candidate to get on a partisan primary ballot unless that party’s caucus gives that candidate substantial support before the primary. In 2014 the legislature passed SB 43 which sets up a procedure for a candidate to run in a primary, even if he or she doesn’t show substantial support at an earlier caucus.

However, on February 6, the Senate Government Operations & Political Subdivisions Committee passed two bills that would undo what the legislature did in 2014. SB 43 postpones the new system until after the 2016 election, and SJR2 would repeal the new system.