California has the nation’s second-most restrictive election law, concerning how a write-in candidate may receive the nomination of a political party at the primary. Only Tennessee’s law is more restrictive. The law requires the write-in candidate at the primary to not only receive the most votes, but to poll a number of write-ins equal to 1% of the vote cast for that office at the last general election. Most states have a threshold that is related to the size of the particular political party, but California’s law does not take the size of the party into consideration. As a result, it is virtually impossible for any minor party to nominate anyone by write-ins at its own primary. No minor party has succeeded since 1968.
The Peace & Freedom Party wants to attack this law in court, and felt that an ideal test case would come about, if there were a Peace & Freedom Party result in which a write-in candidate outpolled a candidate for the same office who was listed on the ballot. Then, the paradox would exist that the ballot-listed person could not be nominated (since he or she had been defeated by the write-in candidate), but the winner couldn’t be nominated either (because of the minimum vote law). The test case was centered on the Assembly, 9th district, in Sacramento. The write-in candidate was C. T. Weber, a former state chair of the party and someone who has been active in the party for decades. Unfortunately, the ballot-listed candidate, Gerald Frink, polled more votes in the June 3, 2008 primary, even though both Frink and Weber and other activists made a concerted effort to reach Peace & Freedom primary voters and ask them to write-in Weber. The final results are 76 for Gerald Frink, and 41 for C. T. Weber.
In other Peace & Freedom Party news, the party has still not found a building in which to hold its state convention. The convention will be in Sacramento, August 2-3, and will choose presidential electors. The choice of presidential electors will determine who will be listed as the party’s presidential nominee.