Federal District Court, on Its Own Motion, Grants Summary Judgment for CA, Rejecting Challenge to Top-Two Primary

You can read the district court’s 17-page order here. Not only did the challengers to the law fail in their attempt to get parts of Prop. 14 struck down, the district court, after giving notice to the challengers, granted summary judgment for the state.

I thought the strongest argument of the challengers was to the quirk in the law that allows voters to write in the name of a candidate during the second round of the election (between the top two vote-getters in round one), but then not to count such votes.  Here is how the court dealt with that issue:

To the extent Plaintiffs argue that their constitutional rights have been violated because SB6 “deceives both candidates and voters” by giving the “illusion” that write-in voting in a general election is permissible, (Mot. at 16-18), the Court finds this argument unavailing. SB6 gives no such illusion. Rather, SB6 is very clear that write-in votes will not be counted. Cal. Elec. Code § 8606 (“A person whose name has been written on the ballot as a write-in candidate at the general election for a voter-nominated office shall not be counted.”). Furthermore, on March 2, 2011, Bowen’s Chief Counsel clarified that SB6 would allow Frederick to run in the general election only if he was “one of the top-two
voters getters at the primary election.” (SUF No. 28; Dutta Decl., Exh. X.) Hence, both
Frederick and Wilson were aware that write-in votes in the general election would not be
counted. (DSUF No. 45.) Neither California law nor California’s elections officials have
been unclear about California’s write-in restrictions.

I suppose this means that any voter who knows enough to sue over this issue would fail on the claim because she could not be deceived by the state on this point.

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