Americans Elect’s web page has this article, explaining why it is circulating a petition to qualify as a party in California, instead of using the easier registration method. California lets a new party qualify if it has registration equal to 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, or if it submits a petition signed by a number of voters equal to 10% of the last gubernatorial vote. Americans Elect is using the latter method.
Courts have unanimously invalidated ballot access petition requirements for new parties and independent candidates that exceed 5% of the number of registered voters. The California 10% petition has never been invalidated, however, because it is not mandatory. Groups are free to use the 1% registration method. The 10% petition method has been in the law since 1937 and it has only been used once, in the autumn of 1947 and the spring of 1948, by the Independent Progressive Party that ran Henry Wallace for President in 1948 (Wallace was a former vice-president of the United States). By contrast, since 1937, every other party that qualified in California has used the alternate 1% registration method. The newly-qualifying parties that used the 1% registration method are the Townsend Party in 1938, the American Independent Party in 1967, the Peace & Freedom Party in 1967, the Libertarian Party in 1979, the Green Party in 1991, the Natural Law Party in 1995, and the Reform Party in 1995.
Before 1937, groups could qualify as a party in California with a 1% petition.
The underlying timebomb ROT is the Electoral College.
Abolish the E.C.
Uniform definition of Elector in ALL of the U.S.A. – States, DC, colonies.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — pending major public education about head to head math.
The electoral college is a good thing. Everybody cheers for direct popular vote elections, but all I can think about is how worked up everyone gets every four years about the presidential election. I don’t want it to be more intense. I don’t want multiple jerks acosting me on every street corner every four years and telling me that I’m going to get us all killed or something if I vote the wrong way. I also feel sorry for the plight of all the non-voters if we get rid of the electoral collage. Why give them more shame? I think they’re on to something. Direct presidential elections will lead to violence.
#2 – how about “expanding” the EC? I think it would be interesting if a couple of States decided to elect their Governor using an EC at the State level…
#2 The party hack SCOTUS robots and the mindless media have created the god-monarch-emperor-dictator-tyrant in the person of each Prez since 1932 especially — along with nonstop attacks on the States since 1936 — via a total perversion of the General Welfare clause and the Interstate Commerce clause in Art. I, Sec. 8.
Abolish the Prez veto — a vestige of the EVIL monarchs in England from 1066 onwards.
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