California held its primary on June 4 for all partisan offices other than president (the California presidential primary had been in February). Elections officials estimate the turnout was only 31% of the registered voters. If so, that would be the lowest California statewide primary turnout in history. The previous low had been the June 2006 primary, with 33% of the registered voters.
For the Peace & Freedom Party, and the American Independent Party, of California, the June 4 event is of crucial importance. Elections for county central committee were held on June 4. The results will determine which presidential candidates will be nominated by those parties, especially for the Peace & Freedom Party. However, many of the candidates were write-in candidates, and write-ins are always the last to be counted. Full results may not be known until early July.
Also important for the Peace & Freedom Party are the results for Assembly, 5th district, in Sacramento. There is a contest between Gerald Frink and C. T. Weber for the party’s nomination. Both Frink and Weber hope that Weber wins. But since the write-ins will be slow to be counted, and since Weber was a write-in candidate, we must wait for those results also. The race is important, because California law irrationally requires a write-in candidate in a party primary to get thousands of write-ins, no matter how few registered members the party has. But if Weber, a write-in, receives more votes than Frink, whose name was on the ballot, that will set up the conditions for a lawsuit to perhaps finally overturn the California law on the maximum number of write-ins needed for a candidate to become a party nominee.