Last year, a U.S. District Court declared the Tennessee procedure for parties to get on the ballot to be unconstitutional, mostly because the deadline for submitting the petition is in March, which is too early. This year, SB 935, written by the State Elections Department, seemed to be moving ahead. It had passed the Senate State and Local Government Committee unanimously on March 15. It retains the high number of signatures (40,042) but moves the deadline to the first week in April. It does delete the language on the petition that implies the signers are members of that party.

The bill had been set to pass the State Senate on March 21, because it was listed on the consent calendar. Bills on the consent calendar are those for which no one appears to be opposed. However, on March 21, the bill was removed from the consent calendar. This may be because a Senator expressed opposition to the bill as it is presently written. Minor party activists have been trying to persuade the Senate that the bill does not improve the law enough, and that if passed, the law would still be unconstitutional. The court ruling last year said that a deadline four months before a primary is too early, and the Tennessee primary (for office other than President) is in August.

On March 21, U.S. District Court Judge Otis D. Wright heard Chamness v Bowen, 2:11-cv-1479, in Los Angeles. This is the federal lawsuit that challenges the part of California’s top-two system that doesn’t permit members of unqualified parties to list their party preference on any ballot. The law also forbids any candidate to describe himself or herself as an independent. The plaintiff, Michael Chamness, is a candidate in an upcoming special congressional election. He is a registered member of the Coffee Party but he is being forced to have “no party preference” on the ballot. He is seeking injunctive relief, so an opinion should be out in a few days.

The judge seemed uncomfortable with this case, and suggested that party labels on the ballot are not important, because candidates can describe themselves in the Voters Pamphlet. He also suggested that party labels are not important because perhaps most voters vote according to whether they recognize the name of the candidate. However, many federal and state precedents suggest that ballot labels are very important when voters choose whom to vote for.

Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that express this idea are Cook v Gralike, and Anderson v Martin. Cook v Gralike struck down a Missouri law that placed on the ballot, next to the name of all candidates for Congress and state legislature, a label telling that candidate’s position on amending the U.S. Constitution to impose congressional term limits. Anderson v Martin struck down a Louisiana law that said the race of each candidate should be printed on the ballot. Both laws were unconstitutional, because they were designed to injure certain candidates, relative to other candidates. Both decisions were unanimous.

Solomon Kleinsmith has this article about how top-two systems disadvantage candidates who are not backed by established figures in the two major parties. Kleinsmith is the founder of the blog “Rise of the Center”.