Ballot Access News

West Virginia will be holding a special gubernatorial election on October 4, 2011, to elect a Governor. Five candidates will appear. Besides the Democratic and Republican nominees, two minor party candidates, and one independent, qualified. The two minor party candidates are the Mountain Party’s Bob Henry Baber, and Harry Bertram, nominee of the American Third Position Party. The independent candidate is Marla Ingels.

Bertram and Ingels qualified by petition, but the Mountain Party (the West Virginia affiliate of the Green Party) did not need to petition, because it is has been a ballot-qualified party since 2000. The Mountain Party chose its gubernatorial nominee by convention.

The American Third Position Party believes that government policy in the United States discriminates against whites, and that whites need their own political party to fight this discrimination. Harry Bertram, in the past, has been a nominee for public office of parties that no longer exist, but which had a similar point of view. In 1984 he was a National States Rights Party nominee for a seat in the Ohio legislature (although he ran in a Democratic primary because the NSRP wasn’t on the ballot). In 1989 he was a National States Rights Party nominee for a township office in Ohio. In 1994 he was a Populist Party nominee for the West Virginia legislature, but in 1994 he was not able to surmount the petition requirement.

On June 16, a Gallup Poll was released for the presidential election of 2012. It shows that 39% of voters desire to vote to re-elect President Obama, 44% desire to vote for whomever the Republican Party nominates, and 18% say “other” or are undecided.

A Maryland state circuit court in Annapolis will hear Libertarian Party & Green Party v Maryland State Board of Elections on Tuesday, June 21, at 1:30 p.m. This is the case over whether those two parties’ ballot access petitions for 2012 and 2014 are valid or not. Both parties’ petitions have enough valid signatures, if the law is not interpreted in a hyper-technical way.

For example, the court must determine if a signature is valid if the signer used a middle initial when he or she signed the petition, but did not use that middle initial on the voter registration form (or vice versa). Also, if a voter signed the petition twice, once conforming to the hyper-technical standards and once not conforming, should that voter count at all? The state says that if a signer signed twice, neither signature counts, even if the purpose of the 2nd signature was because the voter and the circulator were aware that the first signature wasn’t good enough.

The state’s highest state court already ruled recently that a signature is valid even if the signature itself is illegible. Illegible signatures combined with the voter’s legible printed name, plus the voter’s address, obviously give enough information to identify a registered voter. The two political parties are hoping the lower court agrees with the general philosophy expressed in the “legibility” decision.