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A lawsuit alleges California Secretary of State Alex Padilla is ignoring a state constitutional requirement that presidential primaries be open to all voters regardless of party.
California’s presidential primary challenged in court as unfair to independents
California's presidential primary system violates the constitutional rights of those who don't belong to either major party, an advocacy group for independent voters alleges in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The Independent Voter Project — which steered the nation's most populous state to adopt a nonpartisan "top two" primary system for state and congressional elections a decade ago — is now hoping the California courts will to strike down rules permitting the Democratic and Republican parties to control next year's presidential nomination contests.
Federal courts have said the parties have broad latitude to set the rules for their own contests. But the lawsuit filed in San Bernardino Superior Court alleges that California's top election official, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, is ignoring a state constitutional requirement that presidential primaries be truly "open" to voters regardless of party.
He has done so, the suit maintains, by permitting the two parties to set rules for their primaries that require partisan independents to jump through special administrative hoops. Democrats, for example, have allowed independents to vote in person on primary day but have decreed that those wishing to vote by mail must request ballots well in advance. California's Republicans have gone further and generally require voters to register as party members before voting in the GOP contest.
It is unclear how far the litigation will proceed before March 3, Super Tuesday, when Californians will vote to allocate more delegates for next summer's Democratic convention in Milwaukee than any other primary. A candidate who does particularly well in the state could receive a significant catapult toward the nomination.
Kamala Harris, a senator from California since 2017 and before that its attorney general, has been leading in statewide presidential polling and is currently in the top four in almost all national surveys.
Independents and absentee voters, who are disproportionately young and people of color, have been making up an ever larger share of the California electorate, according to Chad Peace, the Independent Voter Project's legal counsel. Peace says his group has calculated the current Democratic system could effectively disenfranchise as many as 1 million of the state's estimated 5 million independent voters.
The lawsuit also alleges that, under the state constitution, its government is illegally spending taxpayer dollars on the primaries because they "benefit wholly private political parties."
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RepresentUs acquired 8,000 signatures on a petition asking Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to keep working on a "revolving door" bill. Paula Barkan, Austin chapter leader of RepresentUs, handed the petition to Brandon Simon, Cruz's Central Texas regional director, on July 31.
Cruz, Ocasio-Cortez still discussing revolving door bill
Remember that tweet exchange in May between Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the one where they discussed bipartisan legislation to ban former members of Congress from becoming lobbyists?
To recap: Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her support for legislation banning the practice in light of a report by the watchdog group Public Citizen, which found that nearly 60 percent of lawmakers who recently left Congress had found jobs with lobbying firms. Cruz tweeted back, extending an invitation to work on such a bill. Ocasio-Cortez responded, "Let's make a deal."
The news cycle being what it is, it's easy to forget how the media jumped on the idea of the Texas Republican and the New York Democrat finding common ground on a government ethics proposal. Since then, we've collectively moved on — but not everyone forgot.
The government reform group RepresentUs recently drafted a petition asking Cruz and Ocasio-Cortez to follow through on their idea, gathering more than 8,000 signatures.
Adults of all ages agree: There's little confidence in elected leaders
But in general, young adults have a lot more trust issues than their elders
Sixty percent of young adults in the United States believe other people "can't be trusted," according to a recent Pew Research survey, which found that younger Americans were far more likely than older adults to distrust both institutions and other people. But adults of all ages did agree on one thing: They all lack confidence in elected leaders.
While united in a lack of confidence, the cohorts disagreed on whether that's a major problem. The study found that young adults (ages 18-29) were less likely than older Americans to believe that poor confidence in the federal government, the inability of Democrats and Republicans to work together, and the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups were "very big problems."