On September 19, the California Court of Appeals issued a 30-page opinion in Field v Bowen, A129946. It upholds the discriminatory law that allows members of qualified parties to list their party on the ballot, but does not allow members of unqualified parties to list their party on the ballot.
As to the law that says write-in space should be printed on the ballot, but that write-ins cannot be counted in November for Congress and state office, the Court said, “Including a line for write-in votes on a ballot when those votes will not be counted raises constitutional questions.” So, the Court, in an amazing display of judicial activism, “solved” the problem by ordering, “No lines or spaces for write-in votes for voter-nominated offices can be placed on general election ballots.”
Just to be clear, the Court was confronted with conflicting election laws. Section 8606 says, “A person whose name has been written on the ballot as a write-in candidate at the general election for a voter-nominated office shall not be counted.” But, section 15340 says, “Each voter is entitled to write the name of any candidate for any public office, including that of President and Vice President of the United States, on the ballot of any election.” And section 13207(a), “form of ballot” says, “There shall be printed on the ballot…the names of candidates with sufficient blank spaces to allow the voters to write in names not printed on the ballot.”
So, faced with two laws that said write-ins should be allowed, and one law that says they may not be counted, the Court arbitrarily told the Secretary of State to ignore the latter two laws. The Court did not say that sections 15340 and 13207 are unconstitutional; it merely dictated that these two laws should not be followed.
As to the party label issue, the Court simply said that in 1980, the California Supreme Court had upheld the old policy of only printing party labels on the ballot for candidates who had been nominated in the primary of a qualified political party. The Court did not grapple with the point that under California’s top-two system, parties no longer nominate candidates for Congress and state office, and the rationale for treating candidates for these offices differently no longer exists. And as to the prohibition of the word “independent” on the ballot for Congress and state office, the decision says the label “no party preference” is just as good as the word “independent”. But the Court did not explain any state interest in banning the word “independent”, and of course California law still allows the ballot label “independent” for presidential candidates who qualify for the November ballot by petition.