At their national convention today, Green Party delegates nominated physician Jill Stein as their presidential candidate.
Stein won 193.5 delegates, compared with 72 for comedian Roseanne Barr, who did not attend.
Stein will face Republican Mitt Romney for the second time. In 2002, Stein ran against Romney for Governor of Massachusetts.
Although Florida has lenient ballot access laws for parties to become ballot-qualified, the state rules for party documents are severe. Florida election officials have fined the Treasurer of the ballot-qualified Florida Tea Party $1,000 because the Treasurer should have filed his report on January 10, 2012, and instead he filed it on January 11, 2012. Recently the Secretary of State notified him that because the fine has not yet been paid, he will be sued.
As noted earlier, California AB 2058 recently failed to pass the Senate Public Safety Committee. This is the bill to make it a crime to pay registration workers on a per-registration card basis. The bill, in its more recent form, has not passed either house, and since the Senate Public Safety Committee is not scheduled to meet again this year, the bill seemed dead.
However, employees of the legislature say that the Senate President, Darrell Steinberg, still intends to use whatever parliamentary tools are available to him to revive the bill, whether the contents of the bill are placed in another bill or not. However, no action is expected until mid-August.
On July 13, the California Secretary of State completed the official vote count for the June 5 primary. A press release from the Secretary of State says that 31.1% of the registered voters participated. This is the lowest presidential primary turnout in California history. California has been holding presidential primaries since 1912. One can view the press release at the web page of the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State’s press release notes that the June 2008 primary had a lower turnout, but that primary was not a presidential primary. No statewide offices were on the ballot in that primary; just primaries for Congress and state office.
According to this news story, Michigan can cancel the September 5 primary in the 11th U.S. House district if only one person files in the Republican primary and/or the Democratic primary. So far no Democrat has announced any intention to run, and one of the two Republicans may withdraw to save the cost of holding the special primary. The special election is for a term that would last only two months.
