Date: April 4th, 2026 12:33 AM
Author: not secure
The candidate Butch Ware is an outsider, anti-Israel, progressive populist. They disqualified him from the ballot by finding minuscule errors in his paperwork. Ware v. Weber 26WM000074. I'm familiar with the case and I don't believe the Secretary of State was acting in good faith. Ware is appealing the decision but even if he wins, it might be too late for him to get on the sample ballot the state mails out.
https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/03/green-party-candidate-governor/
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Judge rejects Green Party candidate’s bid to appear on California governor ballots
A Sacramento judge on Thursday rejected a Green Party candidate’s lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office seeking to get on the June primary ballot for governor, concluding that he did not file the correct tax returns in time to qualify.
Rudolph “Butch” Ware, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara who wants to be governor, argued that Weber’s office inappropriately disqualified him even after he filed the necessary tax documents. He also claimed the 2019 state law requiring gubernatorial candidates to submit five years of tax returns to qualify for the ballot is unconstitutional.
Ware said that while he tried to meet the March 6 filing deadline, he received “contradictory and confusing messages” from Weber’s office asking him repeatedly to correct “deficiencies,” such as mismatched returns and inappropriately redacted names. That, he said, led him to believe that Weber was “arbitrarily establishing thresholds … to meet and hurdles to jump” to disqualify him.
His attorneys argued in court Thursday that he fixed those errors, and there was a complete set of correct, matching tax returns for all five years among the various filings he submitted.
Weber’s office refuted his claims, arguing Ware’s paperwork contained multiple inconsistencies, including a missing business name, a partial date and missing values in certain fields. Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles denied Ware’s claim Thursday, saying the secretary of state clearly demonstrated its attempt to work with Ware to correct his filings.
Ware deemed the ruling a conspiracy by the “Democratic establishment” to keep him off the ballot. He said he would appeal the ruling and file a separate federal suit against Weber.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853351&forum_id=2E#49792821)