California state moves to block write-in status for Socialist Equality Party candidates

The California Secretary of State Elections Division has issued a letter to the Socialist Equality Party claiming that Jerry White and myself, the SEP’s candidates in the presidential elections, have not qualified for write-in status. This is even though our SEP campaign submitted, on October 18, the required notarized signatures for 54 electors and 54 alternates.

While the letter did not state any reasons, an election official eventually told a representative of the SEP campaign that it was because a handful of the electors and alternates were allegedly registered to vote at a different address than the address listed on their notarized forms. The SEP campaign is currently investigating these claims and reviewing our options for challenging it, but at this point the SEP candidates have not been included on the official list of write-in candidates.

Even if this outrageous explanation is accepted at face value, it is premised on a meaningless technicality that in no way affects the legitimacy of the submissions or the fairness of the election, especially since there appears to be no dispute that all of the electors were registered to vote in California.

California, run by the Democratic Party, has some of the most anti-democratic ballot access laws in the country. To appear on the ballot alongside the Democratic and Republican candidates, the SEP campaign would have to have submitted the impossible sum of 219,403 signatures. In fact, many more would have to be submitted, because the state elections officials would subject them to similarly tendentious nitpicking.

The SEP sought official recognition as “write-in” candidates because the state otherwise will not even count write-in votes.

In a particularly sinister move, in 2022 the state legislature quietly expanded the requirements from 54 elector forms required in the last election to add the requirement of 54 alternates for the 2024 elections. There was one purpose and one purpose only to this change: to double the chances that a “write-in” candidate could be excluded on some arbitrary technicality. In this way, in excluding the socialist candidates from the elections process entirely, the system is functioning exactly as intended.

The SEP has sought and obtained ballot access in three states—Michigan, Washington and New Jersey—including by gathering 20,000 signatures in Michigan. We also have write-in status in Maryland, Virginia, Oregon, and over a dozen other states. Elsewhere, such as in Colorado and California, we have encountered heightened restrictions.

In California, the SEP campaign for a socialist strategy rooted in the interests of the international working class encountered broad support, including at workplaces striking against falling wages and rising costs, among workers determined to fight back against the extreme rightward lurch of the entire political establishment, as well as among students confronting authoritarian repression of anti-genocide protests on the campuses.

The anti-democratic decision of state election officials takes nothing away from the campaign, the struggles and discussions that it elevated throughout the state, and the support that we won and that we will build from.

Whatever happens in the election itself, the fundamental issue confronting masses of working people will remain the same—an escalating global war that threatens nuclear catastrophe, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the breakdown of democratic forms of rule and the turn of the ruling class toward fascism, and the growth of inequality and exploitation.

The central task is the building of a revolutionary and socialist leadership in the working class. This is the only way forward.

We would like to thank all those in California who have assisted in the campaign, including those who have served as electors. We urge you to make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party.