Libertarian Party of California
California affiliate of the Libertarian Party
The Libertarian Party of California (LPC) is the California affiliate of the national Libertarian Party (LP). The party chairman is Adrian Malagon, and is based in Sacramento, California, in Sacramento County. As of 2026, Libertarians represent approximately 1.02% of the state's registered voters.
They have maintained continuous ballot access since 1980, which has long been considered a core goal for Libertarian Party state-level affiliates.
History
In 1972, the party considered suing county clerks in Placer and Butte counties for refusing to allow voters to register as Libertarians. In 1978, Ed Clark, who had been the affiliate's chairman from 1973 to 1974 and later the national presidential candidate in 1980, ran as an independent for governor of California to gain party recognition and received over five percent. However, the Secretary of State ruled that the two percent requirement was for retaining party recognition and not gaining party recognition and that since Clark had run as an independent and not a Libertarian it would not count either way. The party filed a lawsuit against the decision, but it was first dismissed then ruled against on appeal. The Libertarian Party of California has hosted the Libertarian National Convention in 1977, 1979, 1980, and in 2000.
Participation of "independent" voters
Since January 2001, California has had a "modified" closed primary system in which political parties can determine whether or not to allow voters who are not affiliated with any party (i.e.
“Libertarian Party of California” enters the record as california affiliate of the Libertarian Party. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Libertarian, Party and California can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30135147. VIAF identifies the subject as 126949957. The Library of Congress control number is no91000986. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 1980, 1972 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Libertarian Party of California” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.