The District of Columbia city council is responsible for writing election laws for the District. On July 13, at 11 a.m, a committee of the Council holds a hearing on Bill 18-345, the “Omnibus Election Reform Act of 2009”. The hearing is at the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, in room 120. Instructions for people who wish to testify are here.
The bill can be seen here. It makes ballot access worse, in Title IX of the bill, which starts on page 17. Title IX is titled “miscellaneous”. It says that the Board will be entitled to impose filing fees in the future, with the amount to be determined by regulation. Currently, ballot access in the District is by petition. It is not reasonable to impose fees and petitions. The purpose of either filing fees, or petitions, it to keep the ballot uncrowded. If D.C. wants to impose filing fees, it should provide that they are substitutes for a petition, not in addition.
D.C. presidential ballot access is among the most difficult in the nation. The law requires a petition signed by 1% of the number of registered voters. The only states with no method for the presidential candidate of an unqualified party, or an independent presidential candidate, to get on the ballot, other than a petition that difficult, are California, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
In 2008, only one presidential petition in the District succeeded, that of Ralph Nader. The Green Party was already ballot-qualified so Cynthia McKinney was on the ballot with no petition needed.
They probably feel that having 4 presidential candidates on the ballot in 2008 was “too crowded” so they have to make ballot access even harder to help prevent “overcrowding” in the future.
Elsewhere in the country the great state of Colorado with it’s much more sane ballot access laws had 16 candidates for president in 2008. As far as I know the world didn’t end because of it. There is nothing wrong with allowing more voices to give people more choices. DC could learn a thing or two from states such as Colorado.
Oliver Hall, a Washington, D.C. attorney, has already signed up to testify about this bill, and to point out that D.C. in 2008 required more signatures (as a percentage of the vote cast in 2008) than any state except for Oklahoma, North Carolina and Wyoming. I am hoping that others who live in or near D.C. will testify.
Also it moves the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner elections to the primary elections. Independents don’t vote in the primary. In essence this makes sure that the major parties control the ANC’s.
The ANC’s were established as a check and balance on the City Council. (Sam Smith has does some great work on the history of this.) The Mayor’s office has been seeking to undermine this relationship for years, first Anthony Williams, now Adrian Fenty.
We need to get some commissioners there to testify.
Here’s a great piece by Sam Smith on the history of the Neighborhood Commissions:
Birth of the Neighborhood Commissions by Sam Smith
http://prorev.com/anc.htm