The California Senate will vote on Wednesday, September 7, on AB 1413. The bill abolishes write-in space on California general election ballots for Congress and state office. If you support write-in voting, please telephone Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s office at 916-651-4006 and ask him to delete the write-in ban from the bill. If the bill cannot be amended, then ask that it be defeated. Anyone, whether a resident of California or not, should feel free to call. The receptionist will take the message, but she will also ask what city the caller lives in. If you call, don’t be embarrassed to say you live in a state other than California.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that states may abolish write-in space on ballots, no state has abolished write-in space since Louisiana did so in 1975. Only five states ban write-ins at general elections (Hawaii, South Dakota, Louisiana, Nevada and Oklahoma). In recent years, write-in voting has been expanded. Indiana added provision for write-in voting in 1991; Kansas added provision for write-in voting for President and Governor in 1991; Virginia added write-in voting for President in 1997; Nebraska added write-in voting for President in 2005 (Kansas, Virginia and Nebraska already had had write-in voting for all other office at general elections, but had previously banned write-ins for those particular offices).
California voters have frequently used write-in voting to elect people whose names were not on the general election ballot, including members of Congress in 1930, 1946, and 1982. The right to vote includes the right of choice for whom to vote.
Hello, thank you for being visually available today.
I had lost track where I was at earlier this year. I had to use the map to find out placement between Santa Cruz and Sacramento…..thank you again.
The election in 1946 was not a general election. Senator Hiram Johnson died in August 1945, and William Knowland was appointed as his temporary replacement. Johnson’s term ended in January 1947, and Knowland ran and was elected to the full term in November 1946.
Concurrently with the general election, there was a special election to fill the remaining two months of the term that Knowland had been already served 15 months. California at that time did not have a provision for filing for special elections, and so the special election was a write-in election. There were only about 1/5 as many votes cast in the special election as the general election. Congress was not in session at the time, so it is possible that Knowland never set foot in the Capitol for the office that he was elected to, even though he had already served in that office for 15 months and would serve based on his election in November 1946 when his name was on the general election ballot.
Under current law, a special election would not be held when a vacancy occurs during the last two years of a senatorial term. And if a special election does, it would be conducted as a Top 2 election, but with the possibility of election in the special primary. There would be filing before the special election.
The election in 1930 happened after Charles Curry, Sr. died on October 10. Curry, Sr., the incumbent, had been nominated in the August primary on both Republican and Democratic tickets. His son, Charles Curry, Jr. was elected as a write-in candidate. Under current law, it would be way too late to change the ballot; and probably too late to organize an effective write-in campaign. So instead, we would face the unseemly prospect of a campaign to vote for the dead incumbent, so that a special election could be held. But California would not permit a special election to be held until the candidate who had been posthumously elected failed to show up at the Capitol. When Jenny Oropeza died under similar circumstances, the special election could not be called until after the new term began in December.
A better solution under such circumstances is to cancel the general election, and after a suitable mourning period, call a special election.
The 1982 election would likely not have happened in the same way. Ron Packard would have probably qualified for the general election under a Top 2 system. That he was elected after losing in the partisan primary is a demonstration of the failure of the system you continue to support.
“California voters have frequently used write-in voting to elect people whose names were not on the general election ballot, including members of Congress in 1930, 1946, and 1982. The right to vote includes the right of choice for whom to vote.”
Absolutely! Please stop AB 1413, California! Come on, BAN fans, let’s flood Darrell Steinberg’s office with phone calls and let him know what we feel about sneaking in this provision.
CALL HIM AT: 916-651-4006
Richard, if this passes, it is probably a sign that you should seriously consider moving from the People’s Republic of California.
Jim Riley, you constantly say I support the old California election law, and that is absolutely not true. It doesn’t follow logically that just because I am against Prop. 14 and its implementing legislation, therefore I support the old law.
And it is not reasonable to think that Ron Packard would have been in the top two contenders in 1982 if California had had a top-two system. The top two contenders would have been the Democrat, Roy Archer, and the Republican, Johnnie Crean. The voters of the 43rd district would have been disenfranchised in November 1982; they would not have been able to elect the person who had the most support in November 1982.
And the November 1946 US Senate election certainly was a general election. It was a special general election. It was not a primary. It elected someone to office.
Have ANY of the robot party hacks in the CA legislature read 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 ???
— as if a part of the mere U.S.A. Const means anything to them — and their Art. VI oath to uphold such Const.
#4 If we are going to play that game, then Packard was elected with less than 37% support, disenfranchising the other 63%. There should have been a runoff in which Crean could have run as a write-in candidate.
In the November 1946 special election for the remaining two months of the session there were no candidate (or party) names on the ballot. In the November 1946 general election the same candidates were on the ballot. Turnout for the special election was 20% of the general election. 80% of voters were disenfranchised by the write-in only ballot.
I think California does not realize that “special” and “general” are opposites.
The implementing legislation for Proposition 14 said that candidates could use the party affiliation on their registration on the ballot. It was the Secretary of State who misinterpreted the law. This is absolutely clear from the language that the SOS is trying to have inserted in the law. You don’t think this is Fong’s bill do you?
Where did this bizarre construction of “declined to state an intent to affiliate with a qualified party” come from? The whole basis of party qualification (other than by the petition route), was to demonstrate that there were sufficient persons wanting to vote in a primary for a party to warrant holding a primary.
Under the candidate form proposed in AB 1413, someone who had registered with the Reform Party when it was qualified, could run as having a Reform Party preference, because they clearly did not decline to affiliate with a qualified party. And someone who registered with the Peace & Freedom Party during the period they were not qualified could not have that preference on the ballot, because they had declined to affiliate with a qualified party. Continuation of their affiliation since then could not retroactively undo their declination, but they must first change their affiliation and then affiliate with the qualified P&F Party.
And the Secretary of State’s interpretation is in conflict with the California Constitution. She is having regard for the party preference of the candidates when she classifies candidates on the basis of whether that party preference is for a “qualified” party or not.
According to the status file on the legislature’s web site, the Senate Rules Committee yesterday pulled AB 1413 from the floor and re-referred it to the Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments for a hearing today (Wednesday, September 7th). However, the daily file doesn’t show the Senate Elections committee as meeting today, and they normally meet on Tuesdays, not Wednesdays. Does anyone know what is actually going on with this? Does this mean that there is a chance for those in Sacramento (or able to get there on short notice today) to speak at the hearing against the write-in ban and other bad provisions of this bill?
#7, thank you. The Senate Elections Committee will meet either Wednesday (today), September 7, or September 8, on this bill. It still isn’t too late for people to phone Senate President Darrell Steinberg and ask that write-in space be preserved.
If there is a hearing on September 7, it will be in the afternoon, not the morning.