On March 15, the U.S. Postal Service filed this brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, explaining why the U.S. Supreme Court should not hear the case. The issue whether it is constitutional to ban individuals from signing a petition on interior postal sidewalks. The Postal Service permits circulators to stand on postal sidewalks and ask people to sign, but if the individual wants to sign, the individual and the circulator must then leave postal sidewalks.

The Postal Service argument is almost entirely on the point that there is no split in the various circuits on whether post office interior sidewalks are public fora or not. The brief would have been more interesting if it talked about the issue itself. An average person would conclude that the post office’s policy does not make sense, and there is little in this brief to rebut that, except the argument that the sidewalk would be congested if signing occurred on the sidewalk.

California Assemblymember Kristen Olsen (R-Modesto) has introduced ACA 10 and AB 1075. They provide that if a candidate in the June primary for partisan state office receives at least 60% of the vote, then that person is elected. The proposed amendment to the California constitution is thus the second proposal introduced this year to alter the top-two system. The Olsen bills do not pertain to Congress, because federal law requires California and all states to hold congressional elections in November.

If the Olsen proposal had been in effect in 2012, eight of the twenty State Senate races, and twenty-one of the eighty Assembly races, would have been decided in June. Olsen herself, who received 65.0% of the June primary vote, would have been re-elected in June and would not have had to run in November. Thanks to David Kadlecek for this news.

The California Independent Voters Network has this column, criticizing the California bill that would impose restrictions on the ability of write-in candidates in the June primary to appear on the November ballot, even if such candidates did place second in the June primary.