Ballot Access News

In California, and some other states, election officials postally mail sample ballots to all voters. In partisan primaries, California election law lets parties include an envelope in the postal package, which enables members of particular parties to send a donation to that party. Of course, a Republican envelope would only be included in the mailing sent to registered Republicans.

On July 13, a California State Court of Appeals ruled that the San Diego Registrar of Voters was correct in 2010, when she let the Republican Party include not just an envelope, but electioneering material making endorsements in ballot measures and non-partisan elections. See the opinion here. The opinion takes no notice of the fact that in future California primaries for state office and Congress, there are no more partisan primaries. The opinion may have little impact on future elections anyway, because a bill is moving through the legislature that deletes the ability of parties to submit anything. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

Huffington Post UK has this extensive interview with Caroline Lucas, the first and only Green Party nominee elected to the British House of Commons. Thanks to GreenPartyWatch for the link.

On July 12, the Third Circuit refused to reconsider its ruling in Constitution Party v Cortes. The original ruling had said the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties of Pennsylvania don’t have standing to challenge any of these election law problems: (1) the failure of some counties to count write-ins, even though the law is clear that all write-in votes are valid; (2) the failure of the state elections department to tally the write-ins that were counted for Cynthia McKinney in November 2008 for President; (3) the law mandating that a party have registration of 15% of the state total before it can avoid petitions for its nominees; (4) the state’s unique system of charging up to $110,000 if a petition is submitted that lacks suficient signatures.

It is somewhat likely that new lawsuits will be filed soon, with slight variations, to make it logically impossible for any honest court to say there is a standing problem. The petition for rehearing had been pending since June 3.