On July 1, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called a special election to fill the empty U.S. House seat of Anthony Weiner. New York law requires 3,500 valid signatures to place an independent candidate, or the nominee of an unqualified party, on the ballot. In special elections, that same number of signatures is required, even though typically only 12 days are permitted to get those signatures. In the upcoming election, those signatures are due July 13.
Courts in several other states have ruled that when the normal petitioning period is shorter than usual, the state must reduce the number of signatures proportionately, or else must provide more time. Lawsuits like this have won in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, and Wyoming. A lawsuit on this subject is pending in California Superior Court in Sacramento County. The California lawsuit was brought by a Peace & Freedom Party candidate in a special election earlier this year. Unfortunately, the attorney who brought the lawsuit was forced to resign from the case after his new employer told him he could not continue to work on the case, and the Peace & Freedom Party candidate, Daniel Frederick, has not yet found a replacement. The court has given him several months to find a new attorney.
California only requires 40 signatures for a candidate for the Assembly.
WTF? 12 days?! That’s insanity. Looks like the donkeys win again, with their dishonest tactics.
Jim Riley is being disingenuous again in #1, as he’s been involved in previous discussions on this issue and is aware that the relatively small number of nomination signatures isn’t the issue in Daniel Frederick’s case.
While California only requires 40 signatures for nomination to the Assembly, the state requires 1500 signatures in lieu of filing fee to avoid a filing fee of $952.91. In the special election in which Daniel Frederick attempted to run for Assembly, the period for gathering those 1500 signatures was less than two weeks, in contrast to a signature-gathering period of approximately two months for regularly scheduled elections.
#3 Why had there been no litigation regarding that system in dozens of special elections prior to 2011?
#4 There could (and probably should) have been litigation on this before now. One reason there hasn’t been is that only some vacancy elections are affected. Often, the vacancy election is scheduled so that the period to gather signatures in lieu of the filing fee is relatively reasonable. There have been instances when there were only a few days, but no one filed suit as a result of those instances.
A more important reason is that Prop. 14 and SB 6 make the previously existing problem (which was occasionally bad enough) far worse for candidates of small parties. Now, Daniel Frederick is supposed to get the same number of signatures-in-lieu as a Republican or Democrat (1,500), with only a few days to do it. Granted, he can get them from any registered voter, but in some vacancy elections the deadline makes that task logistically impossible. The Republican and Democratic candidates don’t care because they can all pay the filing fee. Peace and Freedom candidates have to care. We simply can’t afford the filing fees to run for office the easy way. Lubin v. Panish says that we have a right to run anyway. When money is required to get on the ballot, there has to an alternative and that alternative cannot be absurdly difficult.
so when is LPNY filing its lawsuit?
Candidate/incumbent rank order lists for replacements — with ONE year terms.
NO more MORON special elections.
#5 California law sets the date of special elections roughly 16 weeks after the vacancy, and then sets the primary 8 weeks before that. There are some exceptions to make an election coincide with a statewide election, but those are infrequent, and rare in odd-numbered years.
You are correct that under Proposition 14, Daniel Frederick is treated the same as all other candidates, including Democrats, Republicans, and Coffeeists. Several candidates at least took out in lieu of petitions for the special elections in LA. They might not have got all 1500 signatures.
#6 they better do so soon. Good thing I don’t live in NY.
#8: Saying special elections are roughly 16 weeks after a vacancy, with special primary elections 8 weeks earlier, greatly oversimplifies. However, in all cases where the special election date isn’t extended to allow for consolidation, the signature-gathering period for petitions in lieu of filing fees is unreasonably short.
Except when they are later in order to allow for consolidation with a statewide or regularly scheduled election, special general elections to fill vacancies are between 16 and 20 weeks after the vacancy with the special primary election 8 or 9 weeks before the date set for the special general election. The range is partly dependent on the day of the week on which the vacancy occurs (which, in the case of a resignation, is often at the discretion of the outgoing officeholder) and partly on the discretion of the governor who calls the special election. California law also forbids elections on official holidays or on the days after holidays, so this can both limit the days on which the special general election is held and make the special primary election a week earlier than it otherwise would be.
As a result of the interaction of these laws with the laws regarding signatures in lieu of filing fees, potential candidates can have literally no time at all in which to gather signatures in lieu of filing fee if the Governor calls the election for the earliest possible date, and between 13 and 19 days to do so if the Governor calls the special election for the latest possible date (without extensions to allow for consolidation). In elections where the letter of the law allowed no time at all for gathering signatures in lieu (putting the deadline for turning them in earlier than the first day on which they were available), election officials have generally adjusted this to make the due date the next business day after the first day on which they are available.
Whether candidates have a day or two or they have two and a half weeks, that’s an unreasonably short period of time for gathering the same number of signatures for which they normally would have two months.
When special elections are set further away from the date of the vacancy, that does allow for a reasonable amount of time in which to gather signatures in lieu. This can happen in odd years when there is a statewide special election or when there is a regularly scheduled local election for most of the voters in a district. Los Angeles city elections are held in the spring of odd-numbered years, and San Francisco local elections are held every November, and many school districts have their elections in November of odd years, so it is not that unusual for there to be an election in an odd year with which a special election can be consolidated.
The two most recent Peace and Freedom Party candidates in special elections prior to the implementation of the “top two” primary both ran in 2009. Mary McIlroy in CD 10 had essentially no time in which to gather signatures in lieu and ended up raising money to pay the filing fee, which was possible because hers was the only election going on at that time, and worth doing because she was guaranteed a spot in the general election as the Peace and Freedom nominee (and with multiple “viable” Democrats and Republicans running, it was unlikely for there not to be a runoff). Cindy Henderson in SD 26 was able to gather signatures in lieu to pay most or all of her filing fee, because she had a full signature-gathering period since the special election date was set five and a half months after the vacancy to be consolidated with the statewide special election and the Los Angeles general municipal election.
#8 is misleading to say that “Several candidates at least took out in lieu of petitions for the special elections in LA. They might not have got all 1500 signatures.”
Many Democratic and Republican candidates take out petitions in lieu of filing fees without any expectation of gathering enough signatures to pay or significantly reduce their filing fees. The reason is that signatures on petitions in lieu of filing fees can also count towards nomination. If this is done, the candidate can be sure he or she has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot before paying any filing fee (if only nomination signatures are gathered, the full filing fee must be paid before a nominating petition is issued) and will get a few dollars off the filing fee from the pro-rated value of the signatures collected.
It was and is still true that it is rare for Democrats and Republicans to collect signatures in lieu of filing fees to pay a substantial proportion of the filing fee, because it costs more to gather the signatures than to pay the fee if the signature-gatherers are paid or if volunteer signature-gatherers’ time is given a monetary value at or above the minimum wage.
Prior to the implementation of Prop 14 and SB 6, that logic did not apply to candidates from third parties, because the Elections Code allowed them to qualify with a smaller number of signatures in lieu gathered only from members of their own parties. Now third party candidates must get the larger number of signatures in lieu that were already impractical, with the additional handicap that fewer voters are potential signers of their petitions (because many voters will only sign petitions for candidates of their own party) than the petitions of major party candidates.
#10 of the special elections that have not been consolidated since 2005, almost all have been 112 days from the governor’s proclamation or just a couple of days later.
The three exceptions have all been this year. The two senate elections in Los Angeles (and neighboring counties) were 124 and 119 days after the proclamation. This might have been to permit more time for the first Top 2 election, since the first vacancy was not a surprise. The other exception is the current congressional primary, which was 120 days after the proclamation, perhaps to avoid holding the special general on the 5th of July.
There probably have been an unusual number of consolidations due to the odd-year special elections in 2005 and 2009, and the two primary dates in 2008.
The special general election following Tom Lantos death was scheduled for consolidation with the June 2008 primary, 112 days after the proclamation which was issued a day after his death. So this had a schedule similar to an unconsolidated special election. As it turned out there was a winner in the special primary.
So it certainly not unusual to have had an extremely short in lieu of petition period, it not quite often enough to be called customary.
#11 What about independent candidates?
#12 Part of the discretion of the governor in setting a special election date is on what day he or she proclaims the election. The governor has up to two weeks after the vacancy in which to call the election, and also has a two week window whose start and end depend on the proclamation date, giving a total of four weeks of wiggle room.
Petitions in lieu of filing fee are supposed to be available from election officials within five business days after the vacancy, whether or not the governor has proclaimed the special election by then, but election officials haven’t always done that (and, even when they have, I don’t think they’ve ever publicized the petitions’ availability as opposed to grudgingly providing them to candidates who ask).
Except when special election dates are extended to allow for consolidation, there always is an extremely short in lieu signature gathering period. The longest it can possibly be is 19 days, if the vacancy occurs on a Tuesday, the governor calls the special election for the latest possible date, and there isn’t a holiday that forces the special primary election to be held 9 weeks instead of 8 weeks before the special general election. Even that is less than half of the time normally available for gathering signatures in lieu of filing fees.
#13 Candidates not affiliated with a ballot-qualified party (i.e., “independent candidates”) are and were subject to the same unreasonable signatures in lieu of filing fees requirements as Democrats and Republicans. However, since they already needed to gather more signatures for nomination than the in lieu requirements, the logical thing to do for them was to always try to gather as many in lieu signatures as possible, since they would also count for nomination (and they’d have to collect them anyways as nomination signatures even if they submitted no or only a handful of in lieu signatures).
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#13 And how did the in lieu of signature requirements for independent candidates (candidates whose nomination is independent of a political party) compare to those for candidates for non-partisan offices?
#17 Comparing signature requirements for candidates for non-partisan offices to those for partisan offices in California is really comparing apples to oranges, because except for appellate judges (who are voted up or down in confirmation elections, not chosen in contested elections) and Superintendent of Public Instruction, all non-partisan elections are to local offices. Many such offices have no or only nominal filing fees, and elections to offices in charter cities (and in school districts organized under the charters of such cities) are subject to local rules that override statewide rules on filing fees and signatures in lieu.
That said, the provision of the state Elections Code for non-statewide offices (other than the legislature and Congress) provides that each signature in lieu is worth $0.25 toward the filing fee. This was somewhat reasonable in 1976, when the provision went into effect, but is not today. This provision applies to local filing fees (when not overridden by provisions of a city charter or a charter city’s municipal election code) and to filing fees for the state Board of Equalization (except for third party candidates before Prop 14 and SB 6 went into effect).
#18 For Orange County supervisor, the filing fee in 2010 was $1430 or 5700 in lieu of signatures.
Maybe someone should sue about the filing fees for county supervisor.