On February 4, the Virginia Senate unanimously passed SB 1049. It says the voters on the inactive list may sign petitions. It also sets up administrative appeal procedures, for cases in which a candidate is told his or her petition lacks enough valid signatures.
What exactly is an “inactive voter”? Is that someone who has not voted for a certain period of time or are Virginians supposed to keep their registration up to date like they do with their Drivers License?
Someone who hasn’t voted in the last two elections.
How do they define an inactive voter in Virginia?
FYI, in West Virginia, inactive voters who sign a ballot access petition get re-activated. I often use this information to help convince voters to sign.
This used to be the law in Maryland, but we got the MD Court of Appeals to strike it down on state constitutional grounds — uniformity of voter registration. What the election officials did is that they would invalidate the petition signature — and then reactivate the voter. Green Party v. Board of Elections, 377 Md. 127 (2003).
And later we relied on that opinion to put Ralph Nader on the ballot in 2004 — the inactive voter part of it, not the much more important striking down the candidate signature requirement — which is what we were after the whole time. The inactive voter thing was folded in from an earlier case, and we didn’t know that it would turn out to be so useful. Nader v. State Board of Elections, 399 Md. 381 (2007).
So, if we can’t get the legislature to repeal this, then maybe we can get the courts to overturn it.