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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I hope they can at least overturn the rules that
make ballot access harder.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>They should qualify Green and other candidates if
they get that amount of support in the primary, that they used to require for
the general.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=rainbeaufriend@yahoo.com
href="mailto:rainbeaufriend@yahoo.com">Drew</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=sosfbay-discuss@cagreens.org
href="mailto:sosfbay-discuss@cagreens.org">sosfbay-discuss@cagreens.org</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, June 04, 2012 6:08 PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [GPSCC-chat] Merc: CA Minor
Parties Facing Extinction Under NewVoting System</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; COLOR: #000; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff">
<DIV><A
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_20764086/californias-minor-parties-facing-extinction-under-new-voting">http://www.mercurynews.com/elections/ci_20764086/californias-minor-parties-facing-extinction-under-new-voting</A><BR></DIV>
<H1 class="articleTitle entry-title" id=articleTitle>California's minor
parties facing extinction under new voting system</H1>
<DIV class=articleByline id=articleByline><SPAN class="author vcard"><SPAN
class=fn>
<DIV class=NormalParagraphStyle>By Josh Richman<BR><A
href="mailto:jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com">jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com</A><SPAN
class="source-org vcard"></SPAN></DIV></SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=articleDate id=articleDate>Posted: 06/01/2012 06:32:21 PM
PDT</DIV>
<DIV class=articleSecondaryDate id=articleDate>Updated: 06/02/2012
10:27:22 PM PDT</DIV><BR><SPAN></SPAN><SPAN></SPAN>
<DIV class=entry-content>
<DIV class=articleBody id=articleBody><SPAN></SPAN>
<DIV class=bodytext>They've been a colorful part of California's political
landscape for decades -- Greens, Libertarians, American Independents and
members of the Peace and Freedom Party.</DIV>
<DIV>But after Tuesday's election, most of them will be all but invisible --
and perhaps on their way to extinction.</DIV>
<DIV>In past years, minor parties held their own primary elections to choose
nominees who would go on to compete with Democratic and Republican nominees in
general elections. But that's no longer the case under California's new "top
two" primary system, in which all voters choose from among all candidates of
all parties -- and only the two candidates who get the most votes advance to
November, regardless of party.</DIV>
<DIV>Because minor party </DIV>
<DIV class=articlePosition2 style="WIDTH: 400px">
<DIV class=articleImageBox style="WIDTH: 400px"><SPAN class=articleImage><A
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=4443260"
target=_new><IMG title="" height=246 alt=""
src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site568/2012/0601/20120601_103254_ssjm0603partyover90_400.jpg"
width=400 border=0></A></SPAN></DIV></DIV>candidates rarely finish in the top
two, and it's now harder for their candidates to get on the primary ballot in
the first place, the parties will have little or no presence on the
general-election ballot. And in politics, invisibility means oblivion.
<DIV>"It could spell the end of the Peace and Freedom Party," said party
chairman C.T. Weber, 71, of Sacramento. "It's a shame that democracy is being
undermined by this, but that's the reality if we're not able to overturn the
law."</DIV>
<DIV>The law was set in place with Proposition 14 in June 2010, approved by 54
percent of voters after then-state Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, forced
the Legislature's Democratic majority to put it on the ballot in exchange for
his budget vote. Though minor parties complained from the get-go that they
would be marginalized if not obliterated by the measure, voters liked the
measure's stated purpose: increasing primary voters' choices in an effort to
moderate the harsh political partisanship plaguing Sacramento and Washington,
D.C.</DIV>
<DIV>Maldonado argued recently that minor parties will get more exposure in
the new top-two primary and "if they represent the views of a significant
number of voters in a district, they'll be in the top two. ... I don't care
what party you're from, if you have a message that resonates with the people,
they're going to vote for you."</DIV>
<DIV>But minor-party officials contend that giving voters only two choices in
November -- with no write-in votes allowed -- denies parties an opportunity to
spread their messages and hobbles their ability to field candidates in the
future.</DIV>
<DIV>"It's not a good situation," in part because it's a lot harder to recruit
candidates, said Kevin Takenaga, chairman of the Libertarian Party of
California.</DIV>
<DIV>"The final outcome is going to be the opposite of what people expect
because it's going to force people to these established candidates -- the ones
who have more money and more major-party support," he predicted.</DIV>
<DIV>"This </DIV>
<DIV class=articlePosition4 style="WIDTH: 400px">
<DIV class=articleImageBox style="WIDTH: 400px"><SPAN class=articleImage><A
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=4443259"
target=_new><IMG title="" height=441 alt=""
src="http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site568/2012/0601/20120601_103338_ssjm0603partyover91_400.jpg"
width=400 border=0></A></SPAN></DIV></DIV>is the United States of America,
where we have more choices in what type of soft drink you want to drink or
restaurant you want to go to than political parties and candidates," added
Takenaga, 39, of Sunnyvale. "Why do we insist on having fewer choices?"
<DIV>Minor parties have had three ways of staying qualified for the ballot.
First, they can poll 2 percent of the vote for any statewide race in a
nonpresidential general election. With little or no presence on
general-election ballots anymore, though, this will be almost
impossible.</DIV>
<DIV>The second way is to have at least as many registered members as 1
percent of the previous total gubernatorial vote.</DIV>
<DIV>About 10.3 million people voted in the November 2010 gubernatorial
matchup, so a party would need about 103,000 registered voters to qualify this
way. The American Independent and Green parties meet this threshold now, but
the Libertarian and Peace and Freedom parties don't. And the less visible all
of them become, the harder the threshold will be to reach.</DIV>
<DIV>The third route -- gathering petition signatures from 10 percent of the
state's 17 million registered voters -- always has been impossible for the
cash-strapped parties.</DIV>
<DIV>American Independent Party chairman Mark Seidenberg, 65, of Aliso Viejo,
said his party's registration is robust enough that he's not worried about
staying on the ballot, but he agreed it would be "a shame" for voters to be
denied the choices afforded by other parties.</DIV>
<DIV>Richard Winger, who edits the Ballot Access News blog, is still
optimistic courts will overturn Proposition 14's obstacles to third-party
access. But California already is seeing the effects, said Winger, 68, of San
Francisco: About a quarter as many minor-party candidates filed for state
legislative and congressional offices this year than in 2010.</DIV>
<DIV>That's because the Secretary of State's Office interpreted Proposition 14
to void the old system by which minor-party candidates could gather 150
signatures in lieu of paying the primary-election filing fee. Now, he said,
they must gather the same number of signatures as a major-party candidate:
1,500 for an Assembly seat, 3,000 for a state Senate or House of
Representatives seat.</DIV>
<DIV>Washington state's voters OK'd a top-two system in 2004, but it was
declared unconstitutional by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005
before being reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.</DIV>
<DIV>Unlike in California, Washington voters don't declare party affiliation
when they register, so maintaining party strength that way isn't an issue. But
Jody Grage, chairwoman of that state's Green Party, said it has been a tough
row to hoe nonetheless.</DIV>
<DIV>"Because the primary gets a lot less publicity and fewer voters, that
makes a big difference in our visibility," she said, adding that no
third-party candidate has advanced to a November election if two major-party
candidates already were on the primary ballot.</DIV>
<DIV>Election-reform advocate Steven Hill, co-founder of the nonprofit
FairVote, said losing minor parties would result in an ever-narrowing
political discourse.</DIV>
<DIV>"Minor parties tend to be the laboratories for new ideas. They bring
issues and ideas into the political discussion that the major parties often
ignore," he said. "That's the first thing you're going to lose, and it's a
fairly big loss."</DIV>
<DIV>He said most Democrat-vs.-Republican races end up with candidates
battling for a relatively small population in the middle. So with no minor
parties to widen the debate, he said, "they're going to be talking only to
that narrow group of swing voters."</DIV>
<DIV>Laura Wells, a 64-year-old Oakland resident who was the California Green
Party's 2010 gubernatorial nominee, hopes the new primary system leads to a
backlash that wrecks the two-party system once and for all.</DIV>
<DIV>"I think we're due," Wells said. "Goodness, how bad does it have to
get?"</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<P>
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