On July 17, U.S. District Court Judge Richard W. Story dismissed the lawsuit Green Party of Georgia v Kemp, before the state had even filed its Answer to the Complaint. The Green and Constitution Parties immediately filed for reconsideration, but three months later, that request for reconsideration is still pending. It is unusual for requests for reconsideration to be pending more than a month or so. The case challenges the Georgia procedures for minor party and independent presidential candidates to get on the ballot.

Judge Story had dismissed the case without seeming to even notice that the precedents he relied on do not pertain to presidential candidates. Both the U.S. Supreme Court (in Anderson v Celebrezze) and the 11th circuit (in Bergland v Harris) had previously ruled that ballot access for presidential candidates involves a different set of standards.

Ariana Eakle, an Oklahoma activist, has initiated a change.org on-line petition asking that Oklahoma ballot access laws be improved, so that Oklahoma voters in future have more choices for president in the general election than just the Democratic and Republican nominees. Anyone is encouraged to sign, regardless of residence. See here. UPDATE: here is a facebook page for the petition.

Oklahoma voters have now endured three presidential elections in a row with no ability to vote for president unless they vote for either of the two major party nominees. No other state has a record that bad, since the period 1956 through 1964. And even in the period 1956-1964, the only other states that were equally bad, to the extent of even denying write-in space on the ballot, were Nevada, Ohio, and South Dakota. The laws of all three states are far better now than they were in 1956-1964, but the Oklahoma laws are much worse now than they were then.

Seth Masket, a professor of Political Science at the University of Denver, delivered this paper for presentation at a recent conference in Ventura, California, at the California State University Channel Islands. The paper concludes, “The district-level results of the 2012 primary in California suggest a legislature that will not be dramaticallly different from those that preceded it.” This is because “If California election law now says that primaries are not the way parties determine nominees, then parties will find some other way to determine nominees.” The paper documents this conclusion.

Professor Masket made a factual error on page four when he said, under the old California system in effect 2001-2010, “unaffiliated voters could register with a party on the day of the (primary) election to participate in that contest.” Actually, under the system in effect for congressional and state office primaries 2001-2010, every independent voter who participated in the primary (either by mail or at the polls) was asked if he or she wished to choose a Republican primary ballot or a Democratic primary ballot. The Secretary of State’s 2010 Poll Worker Training Standards make this clear and can be seen here. The instructions prepared by each county election office instruct poll workers to show each independent voter at the polls a card that says, “VOTERS WHO ARE NOT REGISTERED WITH A PARTY. YOU MAY REQUEST A DEMOCRATIC PARTY BALLOT WITH NONPARTISAN CONTESTS AND MEASURES OR A REPUBLICAN PRIMARY BALLOT WITH NONPARTISAN CONTESTS AND MEASURES.” When an independent asked for a major party primary ballot, his or her voter registration continued to be “independent.”

It is not too surprising that Professor Masket got this wrong. Most organizations that support the top-two system, including IndependentVoting, IndependentVoice, and the California Independent Voters Network, constantly repeat the misinformation that the old California system forced independents to affirmatively ask for a party primary ballot, or even worse, they deny that independent voters could participate at all. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link to the Masket paper.