On May 30, the Libertarian Party national convention elected Mark Hinkle as the new national chair. He replaces Bill Redpath, who has been chair for the past two terms.

Mark Rutherford is the new vice-chair; Alicia Mattson is the new secretary; James Oaksun is the new treasurer.

Some well-meaning electoral reformers support California’s Proposition 14, the top-two measure on the June 8, 2010, ballot, because they are very dissatisfied with the status quo, and they feel that anything that changes the election system must be beneficial.

However, if Proposition 14 is defeated, there is substantial reason to believe that some of California’s ballot access laws can and will be altered in court.

1. The California deadline for qualifying a new party, which is in the first week of January. No reported court decision since 1972 has upheld any deadline for a new party to qualify for the ballot if that deadline was earlier than May. States in which early deadlines for qualifying a new party, or a new party’s nominees, have been invalidated since 1972 are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota.

2. The California restriction that does not permit anyone to be nominated by write-ins at a party primary, unless that write-in candidate receives a number of votes equal to 1% of the last general election. The write-in route to a party nomination is potentially very powerful, because anyone can be a write-in candidate in a party primary in California, regardless of that person’s current or prior registration status. Fusion is technically legal in California via write-ins at party primaries. But small qualified parties, and even the two major parties, find it virtually impossible to nominate anyone by write-ins because of the 1% rule. But the 1% rule violates the California Constitution, which says, “A political party that participated in a primary election for a partisan office hs the right to participate in the general election for that office and shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party’s candidates.” That was added to the California Constitution in 2004, and ought to be a means to overturn the 1% test.

3. The California restriction that says no one can be on the primary ballot of a party if that person was a member of another qualified party in the entire year before filing. That law is vulnerable because the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 in New York State Board of Elections v Lopez-Torres said, “A political party has a First Amendment right to choose a candidate-selection process that will in its view produce the nominee who best represents its political platform.” Also, the Court in 1986 in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut said, “Were the state to restrict by statute that only party members might be selected as the Party’s chosen nominees for public office, such a prohibition would clearly infringe upon the right of the Party’s members under the First Amendment.”

Unfortunately, if Proposition 14 passes and is implemented, none of these three hopeful court challenges to existing ballot access laws can be filed.