July 1, 2008 - 12:58pm
Morris believes he can still face Maldonado
By Ben van der MeerPismo Beach attorney Dennis Morris believes he's found a way to still get on tne November ballot as a Democratic opponent for 15th District State Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria).
Morris, who previously attempted to get onto the ballot through a write-in vote in the June 3 primary, said he's found a provision of elections law that may get him there.
Section 8605(c) of the California Elections Code allows a write-in candidate's name to be placed on the general election ballot if a party's central committee puts the write-in candidate there to fill a vacancy, and if the candidate appeared as a write-in on the primary ballot, as Morris did.
No Democrats filed formal paperwork to run against Maldonado in the 15th district, which stretches over wealthy areas along the Pacific coast in five counties.
Morris, making his first try at elected office, qualified for the ballot as a write-in for the primary. With votes in the portion of the district in Santa Clara County still not fully counted, Morris appears to have fallen short of the requirement to get write-in votes equal to 1 percent of all votes cast for that office in the last general election for that office, in this case November 2004.
That meant Morris needed about 3,600 votes, but looks to have only received a little over 2,000.
Under the provision Morris is putting his hopes on now, Democratic Central Committees in all five 15th District counties - Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara - would have to put him on the ballot in their counties.
Morris said he believes the committees would do that.
"I think in all the counties I visited, I got a warm and favorable reception," Morris said.
Morris believes he'll receive a definitive answer on whether he can qualify for the ballot with the committees' help in the next few days.
A spokeswoman for the California Secretary of State's office said such a matter would be referred to outside counsel for an opinion.
If that effort and the write-in effort both fail, Morris said, he's already looking ahead to 2012, when Maldonado will be termed out of office in what is now a potential swing seat.
"We're looking at a four-year plan on this," Morris said, though he did not rule out the possibility of running for an Assembly seat sooner if the opportunity came up.
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EC 8605(c) doesn't apply, but EC 8605(a) is unconstitutional
The Elections Code provision this post says Dennis Morris hopes to use to get on the ballot doesn't apply to his situation, but Morris should be on the ballot anyways because the provision that kept him off is unconstitutional.
The filling of vacancies referred to in Elections Code Section 8605(c) clearly doesn't apply to the situation in the 15th Senate District. Under Elections Code sections 8802 and 8803, a vacancy that can be filled by party central committees only exists when a candidate nominated in the primary election has died. In that case, a vacancy exists for that office that can be filled, and there's also a "musical chairs" provision that if the appointed candidate is someone who had been on the ballot for another office, the party central committees can fill the vacancy created for that office. This doesn't apply if there is a "vacancy" simply because no one has been nominated in the primary election. The clear purpose of 8605(c) is to prevent candidates from being excluded from consideration for appointment to fill a vacancy because they had run as write-ins.
However, Elections Code section 8605(a), the provision that requires write-in candidates for an office to get votes equal to one percent of the total votes for the office in the previous general election, violates the state constitution. Proposition 60, a state constitutional amendment approved in November 2004, says that a party "shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party's candidates". If Morris received the most votes of any candidate in the Democratic primary, and the Democratic party wants him on the November ballot, then the state constitution says he should be on the November ballot, regardless of some Elections Code provision that purports to keep him off for not receiving an arbitrary minimum number of votes.
While the Democratic Party central committees in the five counties in the district can't appoint Morris to fill a vacancy (because there isn't a vacancy they can fill), their formal support is worth getting to show that his party wants to put Morris on the general election ballot (the other condition besides getting the most votes that the constitutional provision requires).
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