Paul Vallandigham writes:
We have seen a similar, steady drop in LPCA memberships since the MC began to control our state party. We used to get most of our funding from memberships. Now we get the majority of our funding from supporting RFK, Jr. and from fleecing LP POTUS candidates for them to speak at our state convention.
I recall there being 6,000 or so dues paying LP members in the LP of California around the year 2000.
I have been active in the California Party since 1982. When I was secretary of the Los Angeles County Party I would do a membership report. Compared to historical norms membership has plunged.
When I was in the LPCA back in the 2000s, membership hovered in the 800 to 900 range, going up and down, up and down. So things haven’t really changed much.
I think it was over 1,000 in the 1990s or early 2000s, but not by the mid 2000s.
This is really sad to see. California used to be dominant in membership as a percentage of the entire national party. The damage done by these Mises criminals is stunning.
A lot of the problems in the LP of California started.before the Mises Caucus existed. There were internal fights in the party. The worst thing was the paasage of Top Two Primary in June of 2010, which has been in effect since 2011. Top Two Primary applies to every office except for President. Since Top Two primary has been in effect there have been ZERO minor party and independent candidates on general election ballots. There have been 3 or 4 Libertarians who made it through a Top Two Primary to the general election for state legislature races, but these were races where only one major party candidate ran and there were no other candidates in the race besides the Libertarian. All county and city offices in California are officially non-partisan. A few Libertarians have made it through Top Two Primaries in these races, but since party labels are not printed on the ballot for these offices most people do not know they are Libertarians.
Running for office is a hassle. Even though the Libertarian Party is a recognized party in California, there are petition requirements to get on the Top Two Primary ballot. The signature requirements for these petitions are low enough to where they are mostly done by volunteers, but it is still a hurdle for candidates. Candidates also have to pay a filing fee, or they can gather signatures on a petition in lieu of filing fee in order to reduce or eliminate the filing fee. Then, once they are qualified for the top two primary ballots comes the campaigning. Minor party and independent candidates know that they stand little to no chance of making it through a Top Two Primary. These blanket primaries typically have lots of candidates, and anyone who is not one of the top party machine Democrats or Republicans is barely a blip on the radar screen in the Top Two Primary elections. A lot of the public that pays any attention to politics does not start paying attention until AFTER the primary election is over, by which point the minor party and independent candidates for partisan offices have all been eliminated from appearing on the general election ballot. The result of the Top Two Primaries are pretty much Republican vs Democrat, or sometimes Republican vs Republican or Democrat vs Democrat in the general election.
What has been the result of the result of Top Two Primary in California? A gradual decline in the number of minor party and independent candidates on the ballot. Less candidates on the ballot, with all but the presidential ticket not likely to appear on general election ballots, means that Libertarians in California have little to be excited or motivated for when it comes to elections. Most people are not motivated to join a political party that has few or no candidates on general election ballots.
Top Two Primary has more to do with the decline of the Libertarian Party of California than does anything the Mises Caucus or anyone else did.
Andy is very correct.
We tried like hell to block Top Two out there, and the LNC did help out as well, but the effort fell short. In response to that, as outgoing Southern Vice Chair in 2011, I gave a convention report laying out where the voter registrations were and where they needed to get to. At the time, LPCA needed 10k registered Libertarians in order to keep its ballot line in the face of Top Two, since the vote percentage at the general election for certain statewide offices was effectively off the table with Top Two. They did hit that number in 2012, I’m told, but I have no idea what has happened since then. (Life moved me back to Colorado then.)
Granted, registered Libertarians is different than due-paying members, but the illustration of the devastating effects of Top Two on the LP is bad enough, regardless of the state.
*100k. Typo.
I know there was a period of time where the Libertarian Party of California fell below where it needed to be in terms of number of registered voters in order to have recognized political party status, but at the time California also had a alternate method of retaining that status which required meeting a 2% vote test for any statewide office, which the LP of CA was able to do. This changed with the passage of Top Two Primary. The 2% of the vote for ballot retention still exists, but because of Top Two Primary the only office it can realistically apply to is President.
I think that the percent of registered voters needed for a party to have recognized status in California actually got lowered due to a lawsuit. If so, I am not sure what the percentage was previously, but it is now .33% of the electorate. The last time I checked, which was last year, this translated to the ballpark of 76,000 people registered to vote under the name of a political party.
The Libertarian Party of California was in danger of losing ballot access and there was talk of the party doing a paid voter registration drive. I had some discussions with people on the LP of CA state committee about it and also some county committees. One county committee actually agreed to spend some money on it, so and another Libertarian and I went to this county and worked on it (fortunately, we were in a neighboring county at the time so we did not have to travel really far). We burned through whatever money they had to pay for voter registrations in 2 days. We were working on some petitions at the time that were also paying so we did not just have to rely on that small number of voter registrations. This county committee said they were going to raise more money to pay for more voter registrations but it never ended up happening. This happened in 2011.
As I said above, I think that there was a lawsuit which resulted in the number of voter registrations needed being lowered, however, regardless of this, the Libertarian Party’s voter registrations in California started to increase organically. I heard that one thing that caused it was that a bunch of Libertarians who had registered as Republican in order to vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries for 2008 and 2012 switched to, or back to in a lot of cases, being registered Libertarians. California was also one of the first states to pass online voter registration, that is that the voter registration process can be done online, although it requires a high resolution photo scan of an original ink signature. This likely helped increase the number of registered Libertarian voters in California as well. The last time I checked California had over 220,000 registered Libertarians, which is a lot. This beats the raw number of registered Libertarians in every other state by a pretty wide margin. I think the other closest states are Pennsylvania, North Carolina and probably Florida (not necessarily in that order). New York has partisan voter registration but the last time I checked New York had less registered Libertarians than Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida. The 2nd most populated state is Texas, but Texas does not have partisan voter registration, neither do Illinois or Ohio which are also high population states. 30 states plus DC have the option of registering to vote under a party label and 20 states only have non-partisan voter registration.
Anyway, the fact that the number and percentage of registered Libertarians in California increased significantly without a big paid voter registration drive and with Top Two Primary being passed in June of 2010 and being implemented in 2011 for all offices except for President, which has prevented Libertarian Party candidates from appearing on the ballot in non-presidential partisan races for all but maybe 2 or 3 or 4 state legislature races where the only candidates on the Top Two Primary ballot were the Libertarian and one major party candidate because nobody else bothered to run, is actually a positive since. Since Top Two has been in effect there have been hardly any Libertarians who have appeared on general election ballots in California. A lot more Libertarians have run in the Top Two Primaries, but they receive a lot less attention and get a lot less votes than they used to get back when each ballot qualified party had its own primary and where each party was guaranteed to have candidates proceed from the primary to the general election ballot. Non-presidential independent candidates used to be able to petition their way straight onto the general election ballot, but under Top Two they all now have to be in the Top Two Primary as well, and they all pretty much get wiped out in the Top Two Primary as well. So the fact that in spite of this horrible Top Two Primary law which has had a devastating negative impact on the Libertarian Party of California that the party still was able to have its voter registration numbers organically increase to over 220,000 tells me that if the Top Two Primary law were to be repealed and elections in California went back to the way they were before Top Two Primary that the LP of California could have massive growth potential.
Back when the LP of California hit its all time peak for dues paying members, which was around 6,000 in the year 2000, the LP of California had a lot less registered Libertarian voters.
I recall the LNC being asleep at the wheel until the last minute on Top Two Primary in California. I recall saying that the LNC should get invovled in fighting that law because if it passed it would severely damage the Libertarian Party of California and that this would have negative ripple effect that the party would feel nationally. I predicted that it would lead to less dues paying party members in California. Less party members in any state means less people to donate to the Libertarian National Committee, and this was especially bad since California is the most populated state, so a big decline in membership dues paying membership in California also means a big loss in potential donors ot the LNC. I seem to recall what the LNC did as to try to stop Top Two Primary in California as being too little too late.