Oral Argument Set in New York Libertarian-Green Ballot Access Case in U.S. District Court

Posted on by December 21, 2021
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U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl will hear Libertarian Party of New York v New York State Board of Elections, 1:20cv-5820, on Tuesday, December 21. This is the challenge to the 2020 ballot access changes in New York, which moved the statewide independent petition, and the petition for the nominees of unqualified parties, from 15,000 signatures to 45,000. It also changed the definition of a party from one that polled 50,000 votes for Governor, to one that polled 2% for the office at the top of the ballot in the last election.

At the hearing, attorneys for the state will try to persuade the judge to uphold the laws, without benefit of a trial. They will argue that the constitutionality of the new laws are so clear, no more evidence is needed. The state’s briefs in this case so far have many factual errors. Their expert submitted a report on the independent candidate laws of every state, but he neglected to mention that 39 states have separate laws on how new parties may qualify. That is why the state’s expert said that, in California, the petitioning period is only 105 days. He ignored the fact that the procedure for a new party to get on the ballot may take as long as the activists need, even years. For example, the California Libertarian Party took seven years to accumulate enough registered voters to qualify for the ballot, between 1972 and 1979.

The state’s expert also made factual errors even concerning each state’s independent petition period. For example, he said that Oregon has a short window to collect independent candidate signatures. Actually Oregon allows an unlimited amount of time to collect independent signatures. The state’s expert confused the concept of a start date for petitioning, with the earliest date on which an independent petition can be submitted.

Georgia’s U.S. House Number of Candidates for Last Half Century is Worlds Apart From All Other States

Posted on by December 19, 2021
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During the period 1970 through 2020, Georgia has only had one person on the ballot for a regularly-scheduled U.S. House election who was not a Democratic or Republican nominee. He was Billy McKinney. He got on in 1982, not because he did the 5% petition that has been in place since 1943, but because a court cut the requirement down to 1.3% in 1982 due to late redistricting.

In that same half-century, every other state has had at least 13 minor party or independent candidates on the ballot for U.S. House. The state with only 13 is West Virginia, which had very restrictive ballot access before 2009. Of course West Virginia only has three districts, whereas Georgia has fourteen.

There have been 7,725 instances in the nation when a minor party or independent candidate was on the ballot for U.S. House in a regular election, for the period 1970-2020. Minor party and independent candidates for U.S. House are a regular feature of political life in the U.S. Georgia stands completely outside this tradition.

Summary of State Post-Election Audit Laws

Posted on by December 19, 2021
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Some commenters to this website seem very interested in the accuracy of official election returns. Forty-two states have procedures for post-election audits. The National Association of Secretaries of State issued this report in September 2021, describing each state’s law on post-election audits.

The states that don’t seem to have such laws are Alabama, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Courthouse News Service Covers Georgia Ballot Access Hearing in Eleventh Circuit

Posted on by December 18, 2021
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The Courthouse News Service has this article about the oral argument in the Eleventh Circuit in Cowen v Raffensperger, the Georgia lawsuit over the 5% petition for U.S. House candidates who are not members of a party that polled 20% of the vote in the last election for president in the entire U.S., or 20% for Governor of Georgia.

The article says the attorney for the Secretary of State said sometimes it costs millions of dollars for a Democrat or a Republican to win a primary for U.S. House, and therefore it is seemly that a petition drive for an independent or minor party candidate might also be very expensive. But half the time, major party U.S. House primaries in Georgia only have one (or zero) candidates on the ballot.

In 2018, out of the 14 districts, there were no Republicans on the primary ballot in the 5th district, and there was only one Republican on the ballot in districts one, two, four, six, eight, nine, eleven, and fourteen. In the 2018 Democratic primaries, there was no Democrat on the ballot in the eighth district, and there was only one Democrat on in the second, fifth, eleventh, thirteenth, and fourteenth districts.

In 2020, there was only one Republican on the ballot in districts three, four, five, ten, eleven, and twelve. There was only one Democrat on the ballot in districts two, three, six, eight, eleven, and fourteen.

So, for those two election years, out of 56 primaries, in 27 of them the winner could have won by spending zero money.

Election Returns Book for 2020 is Published

Posted on by December 18, 2021
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America Votes 34, by Rhodes Cook, has just been published. It has election returns for 2019 and 2020, for president, U.S. Senate, and governor, by county. It also has returns for U.S. House elections. It is part of the series that has been published, every two years, starting in 1956.

Most large and medium-size libraries have collections of America Votes.

The Federal Election Commission still hasn’t published its 2020 book of election returns, which will be called “Federal Elections 2020”. The FEC book is free but has no returns for governor, and no county-by-county returns. Both America Votes and Federal Elections 2020 have primary returns as well as general election returns.