On August 25, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner asked election officials in Mahoning County to do a thorough review of how many votes were cast for for Governor in November 2006, inside the part of that county that is in the 17th U.S. House district. See this story. The purpose of the review is to determine if former Congressman Jim Traficant has enough valid signatures on his independent candidate petition for U.S. House this year.
Ohio law says an independent candidate for U.S. House needs signatures of 1% of the last vote cast inside that district, for Governor. If Ohio law said the petition for U.S. House needs signatures of 1% of the last vote cast for that same office, the job of knowing how many signatures are needed would be far, far easier. Better yet would be a simple law that says an independent for U.S. House needs 1,000 signatures.
The main problem appears to be that Ohio delegates authority over multi-county districts to a single county which then has to send petitions to each county for verification, as well as determining the number of votes for governor in each district. The second problem is that Ohio appears to use split election precincts, where some of the voters will get the ballot with one congressional race, and others will get ballots with another congressional race. Ohio also does ballot rotation on a precinct by precinct basis, and uses a single polling place for multiple precincts, which is a sure fire way to mix up ballots. So Ohio might not be any more able to get the right number of votes cast for Congress either.
Your solution also introduces the post-redistricting problem that Illinois has encountered.
Given that Ohio has no valid law for qualifying political parties, why do they bother keeping independent candidates off the ballot.
If they adopted Top 2, they would be much better off.
They would not be better off, because if they adopted top two, voters who want to vote against both Democrats and Republicans would be disenfranchised.
The ideal solution is to have a flat number requirement.
If the voters of his congressional district wanted Traficant to be their congressman, they would vote for him. It is not like he is unknown.
California (beginning in 2011), Louisiana, and Washington either have no signature requirements, or minimal signature requirements. This is because they treat all candidates the same.
Post #3 is not accurate. Jim keeps repeating things that aren’t true. I am tired of rebutting him, but I assert he is inaccurate.
Why is the EQUAL in 14th Amdt, Sec. 1 SOOOOO difficult to understand regarding ballot access ???
Each election is N-E-W and has ZERO to do with any prior election stuff.
P.R. and App.V. — NO primaries are needed.
#4 Which part is not accurate?
If Ohio were to embrace the Top 2 Open Primary reform, Jim Traficant would have qualified for the election ballot under a law similar to that in California, Louisiana, or Washington. He is not unknown, and if the voters of his district preferred him, he would have been elected.
In 2011, California will require 40 signatures and a fee to qualify for congress (65 for the US Senate, since it is a statewide office). Washington and Louisiana only require a fee.
In the 2010 Open Primary in Washington, there were 15 US Senate candidates, and 48 US House candidates, an average of 5.33 per district.
Have each party hold their own primary. The candidate with the most votes wins and qualifies for the general election. Give all candidates the chance to endorse other candidates, from within the party and from other parties too.