Moreover, California amended its Constitution in 2004 to explicitly permit a political party that has a primary election to have its candidate on the general election ballot.

“(b) A political party that participated in a primary election for a partisan office has the right to participate in the general election for that office and shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party’s candidates.”

Note: Paragraph (a) was in the existing Constitution and simply requires that there be primary elections for partisan offices.

It really shouldn’t matter that the reason for proposing Proposition 60, the Constitutional amendment was to derail Proposition 62 (which would have implemented a Top 2 primary). Proposition 62 was a citizen initiative, while Proposition 60 was a legislative initiative intended to dupe and confuse the voters.

Incidentally, Proposition 62 explicitly removed the 1% requirement for qualifying fot the general election ballot; and also would have greatly reduced the number of signatures needed for ballot qualification by independent candidates. Even when a candidate did not pay a filing fee, it would have been 3000 for State Senate or Congress, and 10,000 for statewide office.

If one looks on the figures available on the San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz county election websites, and combines that with what the SLO Tribune reporter apparently was told by the Santa Barbara County Registrar’s office, the actual count is closer to 1500 for Morris to 400 for Maldonado with probably around 2400 not yet counted (or counted but not yet reported). These figures also make it look unlikely that Morris will qualify under Elections Code 8605, but they don’t make it a sure thing as Maldonado’s campaign consultant claimed.

One interesting fact is that the results from San Luis Obispo county (which includes Morris’ home town of Pismo Beach) give Morris a more than three to one advantage over Maldonado among valid write-in votes, with more than half of the write-in votes cast valid, but he did much less well compared both to Maldonado and to invalid write-in votes in the other counties for which results are known. In Santa Cruz county, Morris had a three to two advantage over Maldonado among valid write-in votes, but around two-thirds of write-in votes were invalid. In Santa Barbara county, the valid votes were apparently split almost evenly, but over three-quarters of write-ins were invalid.

I know that in Mass., to qualify as a write-in candidate, in a primary, or win in the general, one must get at least as many votes as the number of valid signatures that would have been required to get on the ballot via petition (plus beating any opponents of course)

I.e. if the petition requirement is 1,000 sigs, the person must get at least 1,000 votes to qualify as a candidate or win, depending on the election.

(If the candidate qualified for the ballot by petition, in theory only one vote is needed to win…)

This strikes me as a not totally unreasonable requirement.

ART
Elected Libertarian