On June 29, two Florida voters, one a Republican and one an independent, filed a federal lawsuit to gain the ability to vote in the August 2012 Democratic primary for Dade County State’s Attorney, a partisan race. The lawsuit is Mazzilli v Townsley, southern district, 12-cv-22432.

The only candidates who filed to have their names on the primary ballot are two Democrats, incumbent Katherine Fernandez Rundle and Rod Vereen. But, two write-in candidates also filed to run in the general election in this same race. Florida law says that when a partisan race has no candidates except candidates from the same party, then all voters, regardless of their party affiliation, may vote in that primary. But because two write-in candidates filed to run in the general election for this office, the Democratic primary is closed to voters who aren’t registered Democrats.

The lawsuit says that write-in candidates in races like this are generally insincere individuals, who don’t really campaign, and who just file as write-ins in order to keep the primary closed. The lawsuit belittles write-in candidates generally, and says “No write-in has ever won a general election in Florida” and “In Miami-Dade County, only one write-in candidate has received more than .08% of the total Miami-Dade votes in a general election – and that candidate received a grand total of 462 votes.”

Actually, in 1932, Norman Thomas was a write-in candidate for President in Florida, and he got .28% of the statewide vote, although his share of the vote in Dade County isn’t readily available. The brief for the two voters does not give any authority for the statement that no write-in candidate has ever won an election in Florida. Florida permitted write-ins in general elections ever since the government-printed ballot was created in 1895, except during the period 1977-1979. The legislature abolished write-in space in 1977 but in 1979 the State Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution protects write-in voting, so the legislature had to restore write-ins.

The brief for the two voters does not mention that the same issue in this case was already litigated in 2006-2007, in state court. That case was Jacobson v Martin, 2006 CA 1160, Lake County Circuit Court. In that case, Judge Mark J. Hill said the Florida law is clear that the open primary does not apply if there will be at least two candidates in the general election, and also that a write-in candidate is a candidate. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for news of this case.

On July 3, the California Senate Public Safety Committee passed AB 2058, which makes it a criminal offense to pay registration-drive workers on a per-registration card basis. Because Proposition 14 (the “top-two open primary” law) eliminated the vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified, the only method for qualified parties to remain on the ballot is to have registration of over 100,000 members. Neither the Libertarian Party nor the Peace and Freedom Party nor Americans Elect have that many registered voters.

AB 2058 makes it very difficult for a party to run an effective drive to increase its registration. The state chair of the Peace and Freedom Party, C. T. Weber, and the state chair of the Libertarian Party, Kevin Takenaga, testified against the bill, but the association of county elections officials, and the Secretary of State, testified for it. It passed on a party-line vote, with all Democrats in support and all Republicans against. UPDATE: this post is in error. AB 2058 did not pass the Committee. See the more recent blog post about this made on July 6. Although the bill received 3 votes, the committee has 7 members and thus needs 4 votes to pass. When this blog post had been written, it had been assumed that one of the two Democratic Senators who had not been present for the testimony would come to the hearing late and vote for the bill. But, neither of them showed up to vote for it.

Also on July 3, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed ACA 10, which makes it more difficult for a constitutional amendment initiative to get on the ballot. Current law requires a petition signed by a number of voters equal to 8% of the last gubernatorial vote. The bill does not alter this percentage, but says the initiative also needs the signatures of 8% of the last gubernatorial vote in each of 27 of the 40 State Senate districts. Paula Lee, from Californians for Electoral Reform, and David Wolf, from the Howard Jarvis Association, testified against the bill. The bill passed with no Republican votes. Also, one Democrat, Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, also refused to vote for the bill.

The bill also says that if a constitutional amendment gets on the ballot (whether by initiative, or by vote of the legislature), it cannot pass unless it receives at least 55% of the vote. If that rule had been in effect in June 2010, Proposition 14, the top-two open primary, would have failed to pass. It only received 53.73% of the vote. UPDATE: the above sentences in this paragraph are incorrect. The measure says that constitutional amendments proposed by the legislature would still need 50% to pass, but initiative constitutional amendments would need 55% to pass. Thanks to Paul Jacob for this correction.