On March 9, a Michigan State Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the list of which voters chose a Democratic presidential primary ballot, or a Republican presidential primary ballot, in the January 2008 presidential primaries, is public information. Practical Political Consulting v Land, 291176. Here is the decision. The majority opinion is 19 pages and the dissent is 19 pages. Thanks to John Anthony La Pietra for the link.

The 2008 Democratic presidential primary results had been: Clinton 328,309; uncommitted 238,168; Kucinich 21,715; Dodd 3,845; Gravel 2,361. Most observers believe that many Democrats chose a Republican primary ballot, because the Democratic ballot did not carry the names of Barack Obama or John Edwards. They had boycotted the Democratic primary because the national party rules didn’t permit the party to recognize a primary that early, in a state other than New Hampshire.

The Republican primary results had been: Romney 338,316; McCain 257,985; Huckabee 139,764; Paul 54,475; Thompson 32,159; Giuliani 24,725; uncommitted 18,118; Hunter 2,819; Tancredo 457; Brownback 351.

If the state doesn’t appeal to the State Supreme Court, the lists will become public. Chances are, some Michigan Democratic Party office-holders voted in the Republican Party’s presidential primary, and they won’t especially enjoy having that become publicly known.

The Rio Grande Sun of Espanola, New Mexico, has this story about the reasons why the State Elections Director recently resigned his position, including the Director’s assertion that the Secretary of State pressured employees of the office to each obtain 1,000 signatures on her petition to get on the primary ballot.

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.