California county election officials tried very hard recently to eliminate county central committee elections. These party office elections are expensive for county elections officials to administer. These party officer elections use closed primaries, so election administrators must supplement the top-two primary ballots for Congress and state office with closed primary ballots for party office.

SB 441 briefly had been amended to abolish county central committee elections, and then it was amended again to make them voluntary, but the bill has been amended yet again to leave the party central committee elections intact. Ironically, the top-two state constitutional amendment, Prop. 14, passed by the voters in June 2010, adds a provision to the State Constitution saying the legislature shall provide for county central committee elections. Previously, those offices had not been mentioned in the State Constitution. The amendment to SB 441 curtailing the elections tried to get around this constitutional provision by having the legislature tell the parties to provide for these elections. However, if that interpratation were adopted, it would probably be unconstitutional under a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court opinion Eu v San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee, which said state cannot tell parties how to be organized. Thanks to C. T. Weber for this news.

On July 4, the Ohio Green Party put out a press release, blasting the legislature for passing HB 194, the omnibus election law bill that the state claims cures the constitutional defect in the old ballot access law that was struck down in 2006. See this story.

However, GovernorJohn Kasich has not signed the bill yet. And even if he does, it is possible the Secretary of State will rule that the four qualified minor parties (Constitution, Green, Libertarian and Socialist) should remain on the ballot through 2012. The previous Secretary of State already ruled they should be on for the various local partisan elections in 2011.

On July 5, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed SB 205 on a party-line vote, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed. It outlaws paying workers on a per-registration card basis, when that worker is trying to persuade people to register into particular parties. Mark Hinkle, national chair of the Libertarian Party, and C. T. Weber, former state chair of the Peace & Freedom Party, both testified against the bill. The only method left for those two parties to remain ballot-qualified is to increase the number of people registered in those parties.

The bill now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee. It has already passed the Senate.