On May 23, California SB 213 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee. It repeals all residency requirements for petitioners. Now it goes to the Senate floor.
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Medea Benjamin, a Green Party activist, and the party’s U.S. Senate nominee in California in 2000, is the subject of many news stories on May 23. She was in the audience at President Obama’s speech to the National Defense University, and she interrupted the President with questions about why he doesn’t close Guantanamo Prison and related matters. See this story, one of many. Also this story talks about how she gained admittance to the room. Here is a you tube of what Benjamin said.
In 2000 she polled 326,828 votes for U.S. Senate in California, 3.08%, placing third in a race with seven candidates on the ballot.
On May 23, Emerson College Polling released the results of a poll for the U.S. Senate race being held in Massachusetts next June. Here are the questions, which were transmitted to respondents over the telephone, using a recording. Question 5 only gives respondents the opportunity to express support for the Republican, or the Democrat, or to say they are undecided. But there are three candidates on the ballot. The third candidate is Richard Heos of Twelve Visions Party.
Also, question 7 asks respondents how they are registered, but it does not permit them to respond that they are registered members of a party other than the Democratic or Republican Parties. Massachusetts has over 30,000 voters enrolled in parties other than the two major parties. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the news about the poll.
On May 23, the California Assembly passed AB 1038. This is the bill that makes it illegal, “directly or indirectly” to pay registration drive workers on the basis of how many registrations they obtain for any particular party. Because the only way a party can get on the ballot, or stay on the ballot, is by increasing its registration, the bill, if signed into law, will injure minor parties.
The vote was 41-18. If the bill had received fewer than 41 votes, it would not have passed. Now it goes to the Senate.
On May 23, the Maine Supreme Court ruled that Ralph Nader is not entitled to a trial over the Democratic Party’s behavior in 2004. Nader had sought damages from the Democratic Party and its allies, charging that the many challenges and lawsuits the party brought to Nader’s ballot status were not good faith efforts. The case ended up in Maine because somewhat similar lawsuits Nader filed in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, were beyond the statute of limitations. Maine had been one of the states in 2004 in which Democrats had challenged Nader’s petitions, and in which it seemed obvious that the challenge was not made in good faith.
On April 19, 2012, the Maine Supreme Court had ruled that Nader was entitled to a trial. However, before the trial started, Democrats filed a new legal challenge to the trial, and that new attempt (which did not succeed in the lower court) persuaded the State Supreme Court to remove what it had previously seemed to permit. Here is the 15-page opinion.