On May 28, two politics blogs happened to each make the same point about California’s Proposition 14, the top-two measure on the June 8 ballot. The authors of the two blogs wrote independently of each other, but both made the same point about the expected peculiar consequences of a top-two system. See this blog post from Confound Me, and this one from the Huffington Post, by Gautam Dutta.

California has not elected a Republican Attorney General since 1994. One can make a reasonable statement that, nowadays, Californians prefer a Democrat as Attorney General. But if Proposition 14 were in force this year, it would probably result in the election of a Republican Attorney General. Six Democrats have strong campaigns for Attorney General this year, and the few polls that have been conducted in this race show they all are approximately equal in voter support. But only two Republicans running for Attorney General this year have strong campaigns. Under Proposition 14, chances are that each of the Democrats running in the single primary would each get between 6% and 10% of the total primary vote. The two Republicans with strong campaigns would probably each get between 15% and 20% of the total vote. So, California would wind up with a general election race between two Republicans, even though perhaps 55% of the voters prefer a Democratic Attorney General.

Another original piece about Proposition 14 is this from TrueSlant, authored by Jerry Lanson.

Michigan State Senator Bruce Patterson (R-Wayne County) has introduced SB 1323, to set up procedures for Michigan to license journalists. Senator Patterson says auto mechanics and hairdressers are licensed, so why not journalists? Applicants would be required to be of “good moral character”, and would pay a license fee after qualifying. This is not really election law news, but it bears slightly on the ongoing public debate about whether campaign finance laws should be restrictive or libertarian. Many people are passionately opposed to letting corporations engage in political speech, but they always wish to exempt newspaper and broadcast corporations. SB 1323 is a reminder that it is always possible for governments to think about treating journalists as just another group to be regulated and controlled. However, no one expects SB 1323 to be enacted. Thanks to Jim Bopp for this news.

Earlier this year, the Delaware legislature doubled the threshold for a party to be ballot-qualified, and made that change effective immediately. Delaware is the only state in which a party’s qualified status is completely dependent on how many registered voters it has. On May 27, Representative Earl Jacques introduced HB 425, to provide that the new, more difficult requirement should not be implemented until 2011.

The old requirement was approximately 305 registered voters; the new one is 610 registered voters. The precise requirements can’t be known yet because they depend on how many voters are registered in August 2010.

The Delaware Election Commission asked for this bill, so as not to eliminate parties this year that don’t meet the new threshold and which have nominated candidates. It is very difficult for parties to gain new registrations in Delaware during an election year. Delaware has severe restrictions on the ability of voters to change parties during election years. Unless the bill passes, it is virtually certain that the Constitution Party nominees will be off the ballot, and there is some doubt as to whether the Green Party nominees would be off. The new law also disqualified the Socialist Workers Party and the Blue Enigma Party from this year’s ballot, but they didn’t have any nominees anyway. Thanks to Wolfgang von Baumgart for this news.