How California and Washington Could Return to Blanket Primaries

Two bastard liars in just one photo.
Minnie Me liar former GOP Lt. Governor Able Maldonado and his
Puppetmaster GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

 "Corruptus in Extremis"

• GOP Governor Schwarzenegger pushed a corrupt midnight deal with no public hearings.  Both the California Democrats and Republicans passed a ballot measure to ban all independent candidates and smaller opposition parties from all future general election ballots.
• Ever since then lovers of freedom and small opposition parties have been fighting in court to restore something like free elections in the People's Republic.

(Ballot Access News)    Washington state used a blanket primary from 1934 to 2002, and California used a blanket primary in 1998 and 2000. Under a blanket primary, all candidates appear on a single primary ballot. Then, the top vote-getter from each party appears on the November ballot. Independent candidates can be handled in a variety of ways. 

In California in 1998 and 2000, independent candidates didn’t run in the primary and instead petitioned to get on the November ballot. But in California special elections 1967-2010, independent candidates did run in the primary and also were automatically put on the runoff ballot if there was a runoff. In Washington’s blanket primaries, independents didn’t run in the primary 1934-1976 but they did 1978-2002, and went on the November ballot if they got 1% of the primary vote.

Both states stopped using blanket primaries because in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they are unconstitutional, if a party objects to them. That case was California Democratic Party v Jones. States can continue to use blanket primaries if parties don’t object to them. Alaska still uses a blanket primary, in which all of Alaska’s parties except the Republican Party participate. Also California continued to use blanket primaries for special elections for ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, and no one objected.

Banned in California
Chelene Nightingale was the nominee of the American Independent Party
for Governor of California.  Her party had been on the California ballot since
1968 until "reforms" pushed by Democrats and Republicans banned her
party from the general election ballot along with the California Libertarian Party,
the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Green Party.  Other nations that
ban opposition political parties include Cuba, China and Vietnam.

Recent federal court activity from Utah and Montana indicate that Washington and California could return to a blanket primary if the law providing for a blanket primary also said that if a party doesn’t like the blanket primary, then it is free to opt out and nominate by convention. 

In Utah, the legislature had passed a law requiring parties to permit independents to vote in their primaries and also to let people petition onto the primary ballot whether they had any support at a party meeting. The new law says parties that don’t permit both of these things can still nominate candidates but they won’t be given a primary. The Republican Party challenged the new law in Utah Republican Party v Herbert, 2:14cv-876, but U.S. District Court Judge David Nuffer refused to enjoin the new law and said it is probably constitutional.

In Montana, where the law originally said parties were required to elect party officers at an open primary, the Republican Party challenged the open primary. But then the legislature in 2015 passed a law saying if parties don’t want to elect party officers in the primary, they are free to elect them in party meetings instead. It seemed so obvious that the 2015 cured the constitutional problem, the Republican Party dropped its appeal in the Ninth Circuit, in its 2014 case Ravalli County Republican Central Committee v McCulloch, although parts of the case not involving party officers are still pending in U.S. District Court.

Also, Republican Party lawsuits earlier in Virginia and South Carolina against being forced to use an open primary to nominate candidates for public office failed, because in both states any party is free to nominate by convention instead of primary.

The logic of the Utah, Montana, Virginia and South Carolina cases suggests that if California and Washington required parties to use a blanket primary or to nominate by convention, such a law would be constitutional.

Sample of a Free Election

The United States is the only democratic nation on earth with only two political parties in elected office.  In every other nation the people have multiple choices of real and meaningful political parties to represent their concerns.  Below is the election in a state of Germany where voters have real election freedom.

Maybe we should try election freedom in the People's Republic of California?

Summary of the 13 May 2012 Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia elections results
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Party		Popular vote			Seats
		Votes	%	+/–	Seats	+/–
	Social Democratic Party of Germany Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands - SPD	3,050,160	39.1%	4.6%	99	32
	Christian Democratic Union Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands - CDU	2,050,633	26.3%	8.3%	67
	Alliance '90/The Greens Bündnis 90/Die Grünen	884,136	11.3%	0.8%	29	6
	Free Democratic Party Freie Demokratische Partei – FDP	669,971	8.6%	1.9%	22	9
	Pirate Party Germany Piratenpartei Deutschland	608,957	7.8%	6.2%	20	20
	Left Die Linke	194,239	2.5%	3.1%	0	11
	Other parties	335,730	4.4%	0.9%	0
Valid votes		7,794,126	98.6%
Invalid votes		107,796	1.4%
Totals and voter turnout		7,901,922	59.6%	0.3%	237	56
Electorate		13,264,231	100.00	—
Source: Die Landeswahlleiterin des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen