Ballot Access News

On November 6, independent candidate Bert Jones was elected to the North Carolina State House of Representatives.  He defeated an incumbent in a two-person race by a margin of 56.1% – 43.9%.  Jones is a dentist who was formerly a Republican, but who left the party because he did not believe the Republican Party is sincerely interested in reducing the size of government.  He was elected in the 65th district.

Jones is only the second person to be elected as an independent to the North Carolina state legislature, since the beginning of government-printed ballots in 1901.  In 1990, Carolyn Russell had also been elected as an independent, but she had run as an independent for technical reasons, and affiliated with the Republicans when the legislature had convened in 1991.

The Georgia ballot access lawsuit, Coffield v Kemp, now has a case number in the U.S. Supreme Court, 10-596.  The case challenges Georgia procedures for minor party or independent candidates for U.S. House to get on the ballot.  Those procedures have been in place since 1964, and they have never been used.  They require a petition of 5% of the number of registered voters.  The petition must be notarized.  The candidate must also pay a filing fee of 3% of the office’s annual salary, which must be paid several weeks before the petition itself is due.  The petition is due in July and cannot be circulated earlier than January of the election year.

The last time anyone successfully completed a 5% petition for U.S. House in Georgia was in 1964, but back in 1964, the signatures did not need to be notarized, the petition was not due until October, all signatures were deemed to be valid.  Also, in 1964 and earlier years, congressional boundaries in Georgia followed county lines.  One of the most difficult aspects of petitioning for U.S. House in Georgia is that in recent decades, the boundaries of the districts have been very complicated and irregular.  The few instances in which anyone tried to petition in Georgia for district office have invariably meant that even turning in twice as many signatures as the legal requirement does not mean success.  In 2002 the Libertarian Party tried very hard to qualify in one district, and turned in double the requirement, but was told that the petition lacked sufficient valid signatures.

Another reason petitioning is difficult in Georgia is that ordinary voters are not accustomed to being asked to sign petitions.  The state lacks procedures for initiative and referendum petitions, so Georgians never see those petitions.  Georgia candidates obtain a place on Republican and Democratic primary ballots by paying a filing fee, not by petitioning, so Georgia voters never see primary petitions either.  Because petitioning is such rare activity in Georgia, almost no commercial property owner is willing to allow petitioners on its property, and many voters are puzzled when they are asked to sign a ballot access petition.  Statewide candidate petitions in Georgia require 1%, not 5%, and even statewide petitions are very tough in Georgia.  No statewide petition has succeeded since 2000, when Pat Buchanan has general election public funding and was able to hire the job done.  In 2010, two statewide independent candidates tried and failed to get on the ballot.  One was Ray Boyd, who wanted to run for Governor; another was Brad Bryant, who wanted to run to keep his job as State Schools Superintendent.

At the November 2010 election, no Republican nominee for District of Columbia partisan office polled as many as 7,500 votes, except for the Republican nominee for “Shadow U.S. Representative.”  The District of Columbia elects “shadow” U.S. Senators and a U.S. House member.  However, those “shadow” offices don’t count for purposes of meeting the vote test.

The District of Columbia defines a party as a group that polled as much as 7,500 votes in the last election, for the offices that do count.  When it became apparent that no Republican had polled as many as 7,500 votes this year for an office that counts toward the vote test, it seemed that the party had lost its qualified status.

However, the D.C. Board of Elections has now interpreted the law to mean that a party that meets the vote test for its presidential nominee is then immune from having to meet the vote test in the following midterm year.  The law itself is worded ambiguously.  It says, “The nomination and election of any individual to the office of Delegate, Mayor, Chairman of the Council and member of the Council shall be governed by the provisions of this subchapter.  No political party shall be qualified to hold a primary election to select candidates for election to any such office in a general election unless, in the next preceding election year, at least 7,500 votes were cast in the general election for a candidate of such party for any such office or for its candidates for electors of President and Vice President.”

John McCain polled more than 7,500 votes in 2008 in the District of Columbia.  In 2010, the Republican nominee for Delegate, Missy Reilly Smith, only polled 7,401 votes.  No Republican ran for Mayor, or Chairman of the City Council, or at-large Member of the Council.  The Republican who ran for “shadow” U.S. Representative polled 10,181 votes, but as noted above, the shadow offices don’t count toward meeting the vote test.

The Statehood Green Party easily met the 2010 vote test for two offices that count.  It polled 4,119 votes for Delegate, 1,341 for Mayor, 12,055 for Chairman of the Council, and 11,799 for At-large member of the Council.

See this story.  Thanks to Mike Feinstein for this news.  In D.C., there is no method for a group to transform itself into a qualified party, except to place a nominee on the general election ballot and hope he or she polls at least 7,500 votes.  Therefore, if the Republican Party were deemed not to be entitled to its own primary, in 2012 its presidential nominee would have been required to circulate a petition to get on the November ballot.  The petition is difficult, and no one successfully circulated it in 2008 except for Ralph Nader.