The "California Top Two Primary Act," known as Proposition 14, passed with surprising margins in counties across the state yesterday. The campaign for the proposition should be congratulating itself; many political observers did not see this big win coming for Prop. 14.
Under Prop. 14, voters can vote in the primary election for what used to be referred to as "partisan elections" for any candidate regardless of party affiliation of either the candidate or the voter. Candidates can even chose to not disclose their party affiliation on the ballot. For example, and admittedly at the extreme, if the Communist Party qualified as a political party in California and had a candidate running for Congress in say, Congressional District #9 (Berkeley), the candidate could chose to not disclose that significant political affiliation on the ballot.
Lawyers for both political parties will now be focusing on a legal challenge to Prop. 14. I think the fact that candidates can chose to remove information from the ballot about their party affiliation is a significant line of legal attack. It emasculates the political parties. Prop. 14 allows candidates to "hide the ball" from voters who rely on ballot information, especially in so-called "low information" races. I believe it creates an uneven treatment, which can be challenged on Equal Protection grounds. But this will be an "off beat" theory in comparison to the clearest constitutional flaw — which is that Prop. 14 voids the right to have a write-in vote. This is a serious flaw that will not be overlooked easily by the courts.