The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat has this article about the upcoming court hearing in Rubin v Bowen, the California state court lawsuit filed by minor parties against Proposition 14. This lawsuit was filed on November 21, 2011 by the Peace & Freedom Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Alameda County Green Party. The hearing is in Oakland on April 10, Tuesday, at 9 a.m.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This Press Democrat story out of Santa Rosa is a poorly written story but at least it is coverage of the Proposition 14 lawsuit. The author fails to mention the long range effects on smaill third parties which will be eliminated from ballot status starting in 2014. This will occur when these smaller parties can not advance to the November genral election where they are required to get two percent of the vote for a statewide office in an election in which a governor is elected.
#1 No candidate is the nominee of a party, so no parties will qualify based on the votes received by their candidate.
The California Constitution says that the state may not have regard for (ie take into account) the party preference of a voter or a candidate. While California may continue to discriminate among political parties in connection with presidential primaries, presidential nominations, party officer election, they may not make such distinctions with regard to candidates for voter-nominated offices.
Jenness v Fortson said that a state could impose modicum of support threshold, it didn’t say that it had to. California reduced the number of signatures to a small amount. Given the size of the districts, the filing fee is not excessive.
Washington state successfully argued that the party preference of the candidate was just a personal political viewpoint of the candidate and did not indicate endorsement by the political party.
The misinterpretation of the law by the Secretary of State, in effect is imposing viewpoint restriction on candidates – they can only tell the voters about their political beliefs if they hold a more “popular” belief.
California is at risk of getting their version of the Top 2 overturned because voters are more likely to believe that a candidate represents the party if the parties are restricted to those that are “qualified”.
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