Why are Sanders supporters suing California on the eve of their primary ...

[Retrograde]

44. If you read closely, it has to do with

Last edited Mon May 23, 2016, 03:31 PM - Edit history (1)

a provision in the state election law that lets each recognized political party (there are 6 of them in California) decide whether to allow No Party Preference voters and how clearly the county election officials make that information known to NP voters. To vote in the Democratic, Libertarian, or American Independent primaries a Non-Partisan voter (what the media likes to call "Independents", although that term is misleading as we have a valid American Independent Party) has to request one of those ballots when they vote. Now, my county was pro-active and sent all NP voters a card back in March telling them to return it by a certain time if they wanted a Dem, Lib or A-I ballot, otherwise they'd get the default Non-Partisan one; apparently not all 58 counties did this. This information is also supposed to be on the sample ballot that all registered voters are supposed to get, and as I read the press release about the lawsuit, the basic problem the plaintiffs have is that in some counties the information may be incomplete or hard to understand. All of this so far pertains to mail voters, who are a significant fraction of the electorate. The lawsuit is asking for a do-over for people who sent back what they now say is the wrong ballot, although how they distinguish the "wrong" ones from the ones sent by people who followed the instructions in the first place they don't say.

For in-person polling, voters who are not registered with a party can request a partisan ballot at their polling place. But they have to ask for it, or they get the non-partisan one (there are lot more things to vote for than president here). There have been complaints that poll workers were being given incorrect information about this: I have not followed up to see whether this has been addressed, but it can be fixed without changing any deadlines.

TL;DR: The California Democratic party is allowing No Party Preference voters to vote in their presidential primary, but it requires a little work and reading the instructions. The lawsuit says this is hard and confusing even though it's the process that was used in 2008 and 2012, and the information can be found at the Secretary of State's website.

ETA: If voters register as Democrats the above doesn't apply: they will get the Democratic primary ballot by default. They still have to register by COB today, though.