The ballot-qualified Constitution Party of Oregon has recently voted to become the Oregon state affiliate of the Independent American Party. However, the Oregon Constitution Party plans to retain its name. If the Oregon Constitution Party were to change its name to something different, it would only have a year or so to ask its registered members to fill out a new voter registration form, leaving the Constitution Party and re-registering under the new name. Oregon requires a party to have registration of one-tenth of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, and getting the needed 1,453 registrations is a burden the party doesn’t wish to undertake.

Also, Oregon already has a ballot-qualified party named the Independent Party, so even if the state Constitution Party did ask the Secretary of State to let it change its name, it could not have the name “Independent American Party” because the word “Independent” is already pre-empted.

The Oregon Constitution Party disaffiliated from the national Constitution Party in 2006, mostly because of a disagreement over public policy concerning abortion. In 2008 the Oregon Constitution Party nevertheless nominated Chuck Baldwin for President, who was also the national Constitution Party’s nominee. But in 2012, the Oregon Constitution Party nominated Ron Paul for President. When he declined their nomination, the Oregon Constitution Party nominated Will Christensen for President. Christensen held himself out as the presidential nominee of a new party, the Independent American Party, but he did not get on the ballot in any state except Oregon, so the reference books that gather election data list him as the nominee of the Constitution Party of Oregon, not the Independent American Party.

The national leaders of the Independent American Party have been working inside the ballot-qualified Americans Elect Party of Arizona. But the only states with ballot-qualified parties named “Independent American” are Nevada and New Mexico. In Nevada, the Independent American Party is the Nevada state affiliate of the Constitution Party. In New Mexico, the founder of the ballot-qualified Independent American Party, Jon Barrie, has lost interest in that party and is now state chair of the New Mexico Constitution Party. The New Mexico Independent American Party appears to not have any state officers, because its former officers have abandoned the party.

On September 5, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Lawrence J. Appel upheld California’s top-two primary system, which has been in effect starting in 2011, and which is also known as Proposition 14. The case is Rubin v Bowen, RG11-605301. The case had been filed by the Green, Libertarian, and Peace & Freedom Parties. Here is the decision. Thanks to Bob Richard for the link.

The decision relies entirely on dicta in the U.S. Supreme Court decision Munro v Socialist Workers Party, issued in 1986. In that case, Washington state had a blanket primary, and said no one could be on the November ballot unless he or she polled at least 1% in the blanket primary. The holding in that 1986 case was that the 1% vote test is constitutional because the Court had already upheld petitions as high as 5%, and the Court felt that “the differences between the two mechanisms” (the petition method and the primary vote test) are not significant.

The Munro decision also pointed out that the vast majority of minor party and independent candidates in Washington state met the 1% primary vote test and therefore appeared on the November ballot. Footnote eleven says 40 such candidates (out of a total of 45 candidates) had met the 1% primary vote test since the system had started in 1977.

Unfortunately, the Munro decision also said that the harm done to parties and candidates and voters is “slight” when the candidate appears on the primary ballot but not the general election ballot. This part of the decision, which is at the very end, is dicta, because Washington state didn’t have a system in 1986 that kept all minor party and independent candidates off the general election ballot. This part of the decision didn’t determine the outcome and was just a gratuitous comment. But Judge Appel used this dicta to determine the outcome of the California case, and did not mention the actual holding of the case, which is that primary vote tests and petitions are equivalent. If Judge Appel had focused on that, he would he found that Proposition 14 may be unconstitutional, because the U.S. Supreme Court has limited petitions to 5%, and therefore logically it follows that prior vote tests also can’t exceed 5%. In practice, under a top-two system, a candidate may poll as much as 32% of the primary vote and still not qualify for the November ballot. If the case had not been dismissed, there would have been a trial in that same case in March 2014.

Another difference between the 1986 Munro case from Washington state and the current California law is that there were only four weeks between the Washington special U.S. Senate primary and the special general election. By contrast, in California, the time difference between the primary and the general election is five months. So whereas the Washington state plaintiffs were only excluded from a 4-week general election campaign, the California minor parties are excluded from campaigning in the five months before the general election, a difference five times greater than in Washington state. Judge Appel had discussed this time difference in his tentative ruling in this case back in June 2013, but he said nothing about it in the final decision. Thanks to Dave Kadlecek for this news. It is likely the minor parties will appeal to the State Court of Appeals.