On January 10, the California Senate Elections Committee unanimously passed AB 1413, which makes several changes to the “top-two” system. The worst change is that write-in space will no longer be printed on general election ballots for Congress and partisan state office.

California will almost certainly join Louisiana as one of only two states that has ever had write-in space on general election ballots, but then eliminated them, and now doesn’t permit them. Assuming the bill passes, there will be six states that ban write-ins in the general election. Four of them, Nevada, Hawaii, South Dakota and Oklahoma, have never permitted write-ins.

The Ohio legislature banned write-ins in 1947, but in 1968 a 3-judge U.S. District Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects write-ins, and restored them in Ohio. The Florida legislature banned write-ins in 1977, but in 1979 the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the State Constitution protects them, and restored them.

Former State Senator Steve Peace, a proponent of the top-two system, testified at the hearing that the Committee should amend the bill and restore write-ins. However, the Committee did not accept his advice. Assemblyman Paul Fong, author of AB 1413, has said that he may introduce a separate bill to restore write-in space, but one wonders why, if he supports write-ins, he didn’t just amend AB 1413 to permit write-ins. Charlie Munger, a multi-millionaire who has been paying the legal bills for the defense of the top-two system, testified for the bill.

The California Senate Elections Committee has five members, but only two members were in attendance to hear the testimony. The other three Senators made an appearance after the testimony was over, and voted for the bill without having heard the witnesses. The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Another change the bill makes is to change ballot labels. Existing law says the ballot should say, after the name of each candidate, “My party preference is the (whichever) party.” The bill shortens labels so that the ballot will say, “Party preference: (whichever) party.”

On January 12, a North Carolina 3-judge state court heard three and one-half hours of argument over the redistricting plan, but not only didn’t rule from the bench, but scheduled another hearing for January 20. See this story.

It is somewhat likely that North Carolina will postpone its May primary. If that happens, independent candidates will have more time to submit petitions. Currently, independent candidate petitions are due in June. In 2004, when redistricting was late to be settled, North Carolina extended the independent candidate deadline for all offices, not just district offices.

On January 12, the New Hampshire Secretary of State posted election returns on his web page from the January 10 presidential primary. It is the custom in New Hampshire to count write-ins in the Democratic presidential primary received by all candidates who appeared on the Republican presidential primary ballot, and vice versa. No tally is made for write-in candidates who were not on any party’s presidential primary ballot.

The returns for the Democratic primary can be seen here. Ron Paul received 2,273 write-ins in the Democratic presidential primary, so he placed second in that primary behind President Obama, and ahead of the other thirteen candidates whose names were printed on the Democratic ballot. No one will ever know how many write-ins Hillary Clinton received, since her votes weren’t tallied because she wasn’t on any 2012 primary ballot in New Hampshire. But, the total number of write-ins for people who weren’t on any primary ballot, in the Democratic race, was only 759, so obviously Clinton received a smaller number than 759. Mitt Romney placed third in the Democratic primary, with 1,808 write-ins. Thanks to Robbin Stewart for this news.