On February 16, the California Supreme Court ruled that an initiative should not necessarily be removed from the ballot because of relatively minor errors (in this case, the minor error was that the proponents submitted one copy of their initiative to the Attorney General for review and for a title, and put a slightly different version on their petitions). The initiative in question was to provide for non-partisan redistricting (Prop. 77). The voters had defeated the measure in November 2005 anyway, but the Court still issued the opinion to decide the issue for future initiatives. The Court also said that when an initiative passes, it is not proper for it to be invalidated later on the grounds that the initiative procedures used by the proponents were improper.
This decision makes it virtually certain that the same court will not invalidate Prop. 60 (the Constitutional amendment passed in November 2004, giving political parties a State constitutional right to have the nominee who got the most votes in the primary, appear on the November ballot). This is good news for the minor party campaign to invalidate the restrictive rules that prevent write-in winners in their primaries from appearing on the November ballot; that will be settled in a future lawsuit that depends on Prop. 60.
