Independent Voting Asks to Intervene in South Carolina Republican Party Lawsuit to Close Primaries

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On February 4, IndependentVoting.org filed a request with a U.S. District Court in South Carolina, asking that it be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit called Greenville County Republican Party Executive Committee, and South Carolina Republican Party, et al., v State of South Carolina, 6:10-cv-01407. Here is IndependentVoting’s memorandum. Here is IndependentVoting’s Motion, which includes affidavits by Jacqueline Salit, president of IndependentVoting, and Wayne Griffin, chair of the ballot-qualified Independence Party of South Carolina.

The Motion also includes unsigned statements by a South Carolina Democratic legislator, Joe Neal; by Allen Olson, chair of the Columbia Tea Party; by Brett Bursey, who was the Labor Party’s nominee for state house last year; and by Ted Adams, chair of the Constitution Party of South Carolina.

The lawsuit was filed last year by the Greenville County Republican Party and the South Carolina Republican Party. It argues that since parties in South Carolina must pay for their own primaries for municipal office (in cities that have partisan elections), the parties ought to be able to limit voting in those primaries to voters who are not “rivals” of the party. The Republicans also attack a state law that says that if a party convention chooses to nominate by convention, the motion must pass with a 3/4ths vote. South Carolina is one of the few states that lets all parties decide for themselves whether to nominate by primary or by convention, but the 3/4ths law makes it difficult for the major parties to ever opt out of a primary. The papers filed by IndependentVoting do not discuss the point that parties pay for their own municipal primaries. Also, IndependentVoting does not discuss the state law requiring a 3/4ths vote for a party to choose to nominate by convention. Thanks to Harry Kresky for copies of IndependentVoting’s legal papers. All of the state legislators mentioned as supporting IndependentVoting’s intervention are Democrats. Here is a Greenville News editorial opposing the lawsuit, although the editorial does not mention IndependentVoting’s request to intervene.

Here is the Republican Party’s complaint, filed last year.

New Egyptian Ballot Access Law Proposed

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The Egyptian Committee that has been suggesting new constitutional amendments has proposed changes in ballot access for presidential candidates. The suggestion is that a presidential candidate qualify for ballot access if he or she submits 30,000 signatures, with a certain number obtained from each of 15 provinces. Egypt has 29 provinces. Alternatively, a candidate can qualify if he or she is endorsed by at least 30 members of either house of the national legislature. A third method is that if a party has at least one member of the national parliament, it can place a presidential nominee on the ballot with no petition. See this story.

Egypt has an estimated population of 77,119,000.

Pennsylvania Elections Bureau Finally Releases November 2010 Write-in Vote

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On February 25, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Commissions, Elections & Legislation released the write-in results from the November 2, 2010 election. However, the information does not seem to be on the Bureau’s web page yet. It appears that eight counties did not tally any write-ins at all for any office. They are Clarion, Clinton, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mifflin, Montgomery, Perry, and Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania is the only large state that has no procedure for write-in candidates who want their vote tallied to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. All write-in votes are valid votes in Pennsylvania, and the state admits that the law requires that all write-ins be counted. The Pennsylvania Constitution protects write-in votes. In 1905, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said, “Unless there was such provision to enable the voter not satisfied to vote any ticket on the ballot, or for any names appearing on it, to make up an entire ticket of his own choice, the election as to him would not be equal, for he would not be able to express his own individual will in his own way.” Oughton v Black, 61 A. 346, at page 348.

Trial in Doe v Reed, Petition Privacy Case, Set for September 27, 2011

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A U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington, will conduct a trial in Doe v Reed starting on September 27, 2011. This the case filed in July 2009 over whether people who signed one particular referendum petition are entitled to keep their names and addresses from being made public. The U.S. District Court had ruled that the First Amendment protects privacy for petition signers, but the 9th circuit had reversed. Then, on June 24, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued an opinion saying that there is no such privacy right in general, but that if the proponents can show that there is a reasonable chance that they would be harassed, then they are entitled to privacy.

Thus, the trial will be to determine whether the signers of this one particular referendum petition qualify for privacy. The subject of this particular referendum was whether or not to rescind a bill passed by the Washington state legislature for civil unions for same-sex couples. The referendum was held in 2009 and the voters upheld the civil unions law.

In a sense, the people who filed the lawsuit have already partially won, because while the case is pending, their names and addresses continue to be withheld. As time passes, fewer and fewer people will even remember or care who signed the petition.