In Field v. Bowen, the court easily rejected the constitutional arguments against holding a top-two primary.  The only difficult question, it seems to me, was the apparent contradiction in California statutes which seemed to both require that write-in vote lines appear on the second round ballot and a prohibition on counting write-in votes in that election.  The CA Secretary of State had proposed technical clean-up legislation to deal with this problem, but so far the Legislature had not acted.

Today the Court relieved the Legislature of the need to act.  It said that construing the statutes to require a blank write-in line but to prohibit those votes from being counted indeed would raise serious constitutional questions (that’s the position I’ve always taken).  However, the Court said that construing the statutes properly, the blank write-in lines should not appear on the seond-round ballot.

I don’t expect further challenges or appeals to top-two to be successful, and I think that those who don’t like top-two will have to convince CA voters to get rid of it some time down the line.

Between top two and redistricting reform, the next round of CA elections will be very interesting to watch indeed.

(H/T Richard Winger)