Good News for California’s Minor Parties
Yesterday, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 2351, which breathes new life into California’s collection of minor parties. To understand how it does so, we need to go back to one of my favorite topics: Proposition 14.
Under Prop. 14, only the top-two vote getters in a contest make it to the November election. In statewide contests like Governor, Lt. Governor, Insurance Commissioner, and so forth, this effectively means that the contest will be between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Indeed, this year no third party candidates made it to the November ballot. In the last decade plus of California elections, the highest total any third party candidate received was about 6.5 percent of the vote. The Republican and Democratic candidates by themselves averaged about 90 percent of the total vote.
Why is this important? Because under California’s old law, the easiest way political parties maintained their ballot qualification status by receiving two percent of the vote for a statewide office in the November election. The following table shows all the minor party candidates that achieved this level of support in the 2010 elections. If no third party candidates appear on the November ballot, then parties could not maintain their status this way.
If parties do not receive two percent of the vote, they can maintain their ballot status by registering voters equal to one percent of the total gubernatorial vote; that is, they have to get enough people to register with their party when the individuals register to vote. As the above table shows, most of the minor parties in California could maintain their ballot status this way. One in particular–the Peace and Freedom Party, which has a long and rich tradition in California politics–does not have enough registrants to maintain its ballot status. (We won’t really talk about the Americans Elect Party because it is a failed third-way experiment from the 2012 election.) In a high turnout gubernatorial election (not this year but maybe in 2018), the Green and Libertarian parties would be challenged to maintain their status.
So why is AB 2351 such good news? It changes the standards for the parties to maintain their status in two important ways. First, it moves the two percent requirement from the November election to the June election. The Green Party had three candidates cross this threshold this year (Jena Goodman for Lt. Governor, David Curtis for Secretary of State, Laura Wells for Controller, and Ellen Brown for Treasurer). The Libertarian Party had one candidate (Jonathan Jaech for Attorney General). The Peace and Freedom Party had also had one candidate (Nathalie Hrizi for Insurance Commissioner). Only the American Independent Party failed to cross the two percent threshold. Second, it reduces the number of registrants required to maintain ballot status from one percent of the November gubernatorial vote to just 0.33 percent of the total statewide registration. All of the parties (save Americans Elect) meet this requirement.
What we have here is a nice bit of reform. The old rules made it almost impossible for the California’s minor parties to continue and contest elections. Recognizing this, the legislature changed the rules so that the minor parties won’t be forced from the ballot.
Well, they won’t be forced from the June ballot at least. We still won’t seem them in November.
California’s Gubernatorial Debate
If a debate happens and nobody pays any attention, does it really happen?
A full two months before the November election, California’s incumbent governor, Jerry Brown, and his challenger, Neel Kashkari, squared off for their one and only debate. It was a testy affair, and Kashkari desperately tried to create some heat for his campaign.
Yeah. About that.
Here are some screen grabs from some of California’s major newspapers. See if you can spot the theme:
Let’s start with the best home-page coverage, the San Jose Mercury News:
So far, so good. Now something a little less prominent but still heavily featured, the Sacramento Bee:
Okay. Still pretty good. There’s a picture there, and it seems to be the main article. Now, SFGate (the free version of the San Francisco Chronicle):
Uh, oh. According the Chronicle editors, you the reader are likely to care more about the price of a 49ers game, real estate in Berkeley, or how to successfully quit your job than you are the debate. Well, San Francisco is a hot bed of liberalism. Maybe it’s an aberration.
Here’s two conservative papers, though, the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press Enterprise.
There’s no mention of the debate at all here. None at all.
A monster-sized boulder is apparently more important than the gubernatorial debate to the readers in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Finally, from the Los Angeles Times:
Yeah. No debate here either. (Although maybe the story about the grocery bags is a stealth attempt to get people to read about the debate. Brown did say during the debate that he would probably sign the bill banning plastic grocery bags in California.)
So, summing up. There was a debate last night between the two people running for governor in California. It’s the only debate that will happen between these two people. Only half of the state’s major newspapers think it was worth your attention. (Or, more accurately, think you care enough about it to feature it on their home-page.)
Admittedly, I haven’t seen the print editions of these newspapers. Maybe the debate is above the fold there. Most people don’t get their news from print editions any more, though.
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P.S. If you are wondering where all the adds are (the LA Times site has a lot of white space, for example), they aren’t being displayed because I use Ad Block Plus on my Chrome browser.
Thoughts on the June 3 Election
Californians (at least a very small number of us) went to the polls yesterday (well, most of us mailed back our ballots and didn’t actually go to the polls). Here are some thoughts, in no particular order of importance:
- Turnout was really, really, really low–even for a boring election like this one. Right now it looks like turnout among registered voters (who we think are likely to vote because they bothered to register) will be a mere 18.5%. In 2010 and 2006, registered turnout was 33%. This is voter participation looks like in an election where the most compelling statewide race is the Secretary of State contest and there are no big, sexy ballot initiatives to draw people’s attention.
- At least locally, this election looks to be as close to an all-mail election as we’ve seen in a long time. Last week, over 42,000 mail ballots had been returned to the Registrar’s office. As of this morning, the Registrar reports that just over 50,000 people voted in San Joaquin County. Even assuming that no more mail ballots were submitted (problematic), that means that about 85% of the ballots cast were cast through the mail.
- Unless I have missed something, there will be no minor party candidates on this fall’s ballot. There will be a handful of No Party Preference candidates, but no minor party candidates were among the top two vote getters in any partisan contest.
- In 2012, the Democrats blew a great opportunity to pick up the 31st congressional district. The district tilts slightly Democratic in its presidential/gubernatorial voting and in its voter registration, but no Democrat appeared on the November ballot in 2012 because the Democrats could not coordinate and settle on a single candidate. They almost did it again this year. Pete Aguilar, the top vote getter among the four (!) Democrats in the district, received just 390 more votes than the second-place Republican, Lesli Gooch. Aguilar should win against Paul Chabot in November, though.
- Locally, the state and national contests were largely cake-walks for the incumbents. Jerry McNerney (D, CA-9) received more than 50% of the vote. Jeff Denham (R, CA-10) got more than 57% of the vote. The Assembly and State Senate members all coasted as well (though not all with as large a vote margin).
- Also, remember, no matter what they say in the media, yesterday’s election was not a primary.
The Voting Wars Come to California
Rick Hasen calls this kind of thing voting wars, the extension of partisan conflict into the voting process. Last week, the California Secretary of State certified a ballot initiative for circulation (meaning its sponsors can begin to collect signatures) that would require every California polling-place voter to present a government-issued photo identification and every postal/absentee voter to include information from a government-issued identification (e.g., the last four digits of a Social Security number) in order for their vote to be counted. Never mind that the evidence for the kind voter fraud this requirement addresses is basically non-existent and that these kinds of requirements tend to discourage minorities, poor people, and the elderly from voting. Interestingly, this petition comes shortly after California enacted a new law (SB 360) that allows the state to experiment with new voting technologies (hello, internet voting!) in an effort to help more people to vote.
Here’s the official synopsis:
ELECTIONS. VOTER IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE. Prohibits citizen’s vote at the polls from being counted unless he or she presents government-issued photo-identification. Establishes provisional voting for citizens at the polls who fail to present government-issued photo-identification. Requires that provisional ballots and mail-in ballots be deemed invalid unless the accompanying envelope contains the citizen’s birthdate, and citizen’s identification number or last four digits of driver’s license, state identification card, or social security number. Requires that election officials verify this information prior to opening or counting ballot. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increased local government elections costs and decreased state fee revenues, potentially in the range of tens of millions of dollars per year. Potentially increased state funding (about $100 million) to local governments, offset by an equal amount of decreased state funding to local governments in future years. (13-0039.)
Be sure to look for it at a supermarket or mall near you. Then, walk away without signing the petition.
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