Mississippi holds its presidential primary on March 8. Willie Wilson petitioned to get on the ballot, and met the 500-signature requirement. The Democratic Party at first thought the petition needed 100 signatures in each of the old five U.S. House district, so they did not certify his name to the Secretary of State. Then the party became aware that there is no distribution requirement in effect, but by then some ballots had already been printed and mailed to overseas absentee ballots.
On February 10, the Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the mistake should be corrected. The Secretary of State argues that because some overseas absentee voters received a ballot without Wilson’s name, therefore it is impossible to correct the mistake. But the U.S. Supreme Court came to a contrary decision in Norman v Reed in 1992. It ordered Cook County general election ballots reprinted only thirteen days before the general election, because the Harold Washington Party nominees for Cook County office had been wrongfully left off the ballot. Many thousands of Cook County absentee ballots had already been cast at that point. There are other examples as well. See this story.
Our United Coalition, consisting of Gail Lightfoot for US Senate, would like to clarify that ranked choice voting (RCV) in single-winner districts is pluarlity voting, where usually the only the biggest party or civic group can win.
Non-ranked ballot voting is better than ranked choice voting (RCV) for third parties because of the split vote problem. Third parties and independents have a good random chance to win without RCV.
By requiring a simple majority of 50% plus one vote under RCV – outsider third parties and independents can almost never reach 50% plus one vote.
Fortunately, as the leading expert in pure proportional representation in the USA today, I James Ogle, can articulate the way the math works in the only system that generates unity like no one else.
Top Two has been a slight improvement, because when united, Republicans and third parties can achieve 33.33% plus two votes to guarantee the victory.
Because of the pluralists who often post on this web site a lot of misinformation about the beauty of Top Two have been posted here.
The United Coalition
We have Voluntary Law Minister Jonathan Jaech (Libertarian) and Green Party POTUS candidates; Environment Ministry Directors Sedinam Kinamo Christin Moyowasifza-Curry (Green) and Kent P. Mesplay (Green) – in the United Coalition working diligantly for the team on the International Parliament.
Now we’re trying to bring that success to one of California’s US Senate candidates; the Gail Lightfoot (Libertarian) campaign. Nobody has it as good as our team.
Democratic candidate Andy Caffrey (Democratic) and myself a Republican, are making this happen across the USA.
Everyone working together for pure proportional representation (PR).
ANNOUNCEMENT
By James Ogle [Republican]
I am pleased to announce that I James Ogle [Republican], a write-in candidate for US President in 2016, will be seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party at their national convention in Orlando Florida, as a Libertarian/Republican (or visa versa) unity ticket.
The Unity Coalition team will distribute our ballot there, and #1 and #2 will be our President and Vice President, based on the voting of our paper ballot which is pretty much identical to the 550+ paper ballots that we distributed there at the Libertarian national convention in 2012.
For all new nominees, preferably my opposite gender, please be sure to contact us to be nominated to the ballot of the 9th USA Parliament election or click on the following link to nominate:
http://www.usparliament.org/votehere.php
We will ask all Libertarians and Green Party members alike, to give what us voters want, a united effort among partisans and independents alike, to win a plurality in 2016 for US President.
Thank you very much for your consideration and I look forward to working with everyone interested in a unifying voting system in 2016.
MOVE provides an exception for “legal contests” that delay transmissions. See 52 U.S.C. ยง 20302(g)(2)(B)(ii) (stating that where a “State has suffered a delay in generating ballots due to a legal contest” it need not comply). So even with federal elections, overseas ballots may be delayed beyond and even changed after the 45-day clock begins running.
Ballots transmitted under UOCAVA/MOVE need not be the same ballots used for in-person voting. They are not the same ballots sent to absentee voters. UOCAVA/MOVE ballots are most often simple write-in ballots, including SWABs (special write-in absentee ballots) prepared by states and FWABs (federal write-in absentee ballots) printed by the federal government. The latter are available on any military base. Election boards simply mail out a list of candidates whose names may then be penciled in by the overseas voters on these FWABs. Ohio counties do this using forms prescribed by the Secretary of State. I cannot imagine Mississippi is any different.
The numbers of Overseas voters in primaries, moreover, is always small. In Ohio for the last presidential election only 1000 overseas ballots were sent out. Again, I suspect Mississippi does not diverge from this.
Hence, the UOCAVA argument is almost always a exaggerated. It is used as a bogeyman to scare courts away from correcting ballots.