Although California’s Proposition 14 increases the ballot qualification rules for parties to be ballot-qualified, no California newspaper story had yet mentioned that characteristic, until this San Francisco Chronicle story of March 10. It appears on page one.
Proposition 62, the earlier California top-two open primary measure from 2004, did not increase the difficulty for a party to remain ballot-qualified. To compensate for effectively eliminating the 2% vote test (which, under current law, is the easiest method by which parties remain ballot-qualified), Proposition 62 in 2004 lowered the registration test from 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, to one-third of 1%. That way, no qualified party would have lost its qualified status if Proposition 62 had passed.
The backers of Prop. 14 were free to have taken that step as well, but they chose not to do that. The quote in the story represents the first time any backer of Prop. 14 has been confronted with the question of why they are making it more difficult for parties to remain ballot-qualified. As anyone who reads the story can see, the backers breezily said, in response, “They’ll just need to keep their numbers up.”
Back in 1981, the California legislature was threatening to pass a bill to raise the registration requirements for a party to remain ballot-qualified. The bill failed to pass after 40 newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations editorially condemned the bill. Ironically, Proposition 14 is more severe than the 1981 bill, which required one-half of 1% of the total number of registered voters. Proposition 14 raises it, in effect, to 1% of the last gubernatorial vote.
The Sacramento Bee of March 11 has this story, pointing out that opponents of Proposition 14 are so far not spending any money against it.