Nielsen Merksamer, the California law firm that always intervenes in cases having anything to do with California’s top-two has asked the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear Rubin v Padilla. Rubin v Padilla is the minor party lawsuit that argues the top-two system injures voting rights in the general election.

The Nielsen Merksamer brief says, in a nutshell, that voters have no right of choice in a general election other than just two candidates. It says voters who don’t like their limited choices in November should have voted in June. Of course, not all voters could have done that. Some will have attained age 18 after the primary is over, some will be newly naturalized citizens who had not been naturalized at the time of the primary, and some will have moved into California too late for the primary.

The Nielsen Merksamer brief highlights the minority of court decisions that have upheld independent candidate petition deadlines in the spring, but does not mention the far more numerous lawsuits that have struck down early deadlines. The brief also says that in Lawrence v Blackwell, an Ohio case that upheld the non-presidential independent deadline, “all candidates were subject to the same deadline.” This is factually incorrect. The Ohio law provided that primary candidates had to file 60 days before the primary, but independent candidates had to file on the day before the primary.

The Associated Press has this story about the August 27 U.S. District Court decision that upholds the 2014 ballot access restriction. That law makes it illegal to circulate the petition for a new party during an odd year.

On August 27, the California Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 1461, the bill to provide that all adult citizens known to the state should be automatically registered to vote. Such individuals would be informed that they had become registered, and would be given a chance to opt out.

The bill was amended on August 27 to provide for a new category of registered voters, relative to party affiliation. Individuals who were automatically registered, and who did not choose to then make a decision about affiliation, would be categorized “unknown.” This would be a new, separate category from “independent”. Other states that have separate categories for voters who didn’t fill out the affiliation question, versus independent voters, are Alaska, Kentucky, and South Dakota. Thanks to C.T. Weber for the news about the amendment.

The bill is likely to pass. It had passed the Assembly on June 2. The Republican leader in the Assembly, Kristin Olsen, had voted “No” but now she appears to support it, according to remarks she made at a public meeting on August 19.