Joe Brown, a former Tampa Tribune columnist, has this op-ed in that newspaper, advocating that write-in space on Florida ballots be abolished.

Write-ins in Florida are already severely restricted. No one can be a write-in candidate unless he or she files a declaration of write-in candidacy five months before the general election. Write-ins in primaries are not permitted.

Brown, and other Florida commentators, frequently express ire that write-in candidates appear to be responsible for closing certain primaries for partisan office that would otherwise be open to all registered voters. The Florida Constitution provides that when there are no candidates for a particular partisan office except members of just one party, then the primary for that particular office shall be open to all voters. But when a write-in candidate files for that office in the general election, then that constitutional provision doesn’t apply, and the primary for that office is closed.

Florida newspaper columnists and reporters consistently fail to grasp that the real problem in Florida is that so many partisan elections only have candidates from one particular party. This is because the Florida filing fees are so staggeringly high. If Florida had modest candidate filing fees, more people from different parties would file, and one-party elections would be far less likely. Florida filing fees are 6% of the office’s annual salary. Except for Georgia, which has 3% filing fees, no other state has filing fees in excess of 2% of the office annual salary.

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.