Clyde Cook, the only Republican who filed for the New Jersey State Senate District 5 seat, only submitted 105 signatures. His petition was challenged and he was removed from the primary ballot. The requirement is 100 signatures. See this story. The primary is in June 2021. New Jersey allows write-ins in primaries, so Cook may still win the nomination if he receives at least 100 write-ins and no one else polls more write-ins than that.
California law says that once an election-related petition is submitted, it is not a public document. On April 12, the Senate Elections Committee passed SB 663 by a vote of 4-1. It says that an exception will be made for recall petitions. Once the recall petition is submitted, opponents may see the petitions and copy them. This will enable them to try to persuade signers to remove their names. The bill also extends the deadline for individuals to withdraw their names, from the date the petition is submittted, until 45 days after the petition has been submitted.
The bill now goes to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it will be heard on April 20. If the bill becomes law, it will not take effect until January 1, 2022, so it would not affect the current gubernatorial recall petition.
On April 13, New Hampshire held a special election to fill a vacancy in the State House, Hillsborough 21 district. The results: Republican Bill Boyd 52.96%; Democrat Wendy Thomas 44.86%; American Solidarity nominee Stephen Hollenberg 2.18%.
When this seat was last up, in November 2020, the combined Republican vote was 52.53% and the combined Democratic vote was 47.47%. The district normally elects eight representatives and both major parties ran eight nominees each.
As already reported, on March 29, the Sixth Circuit struck down Michigan’s statewide independent candidate petition, which required 30,000 signatures due in July. The time for the state to ask for a rehearing has now passed, and the state did not ask for a rehearing. Graveline v Benson, 20-1337. The basis for the decision was that the petition had been in existence since 1988, but in all those years, only two statewide independent petitions had succeeded, both for president (Ralph Nader in 2004 and Ross Perot in 1992). For other statewide office, it had never been used at all.
The Sixth Circuit includes four states: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Graveline precedent will make it plausible to challenge the new party petition procedures in Tennessee and Ohio. The Tennessee party petition had existed since 1961 but has been used only once, in 1968, by George Wallace’s American Party.
Even Americans Elect failed in Tennessee, in 2012. Tennessee is the only state in which Americans Elect thought it had finished a petition drive, turned in the signatures, and was told it didn’t have enough valid signatures. For 2022, Tennessee requires 56,083 signatures.
The Ohio party petition has existed since 1971 and has been used in 1976, 1982, 1996, 2000, 2011, and 2018. For 2022, it requires 57,630 signatures.
On April 12, the California Senate Elections Committee passed SB 660 by 3-2. It makes it illegal to pay circulators of certain types of petition on a per-signature basis. The two “no” votes included one Democrat and one Republican. Similar bills have passed in many sessions of the California legislature, but each of the last three California Governors vetoed them. The League of Women Voters opposed the bill.
