On April 20, the Michigan Secretary of State filed a notice of appeal in Graveline v Benson, e.d., 2:18cv-12354. This is the case in which a U.S. District Court last year invalidated the Michigan law that requires independent candidates for statewide office to submit 30,000 valid signatures.
Colorado election law lets candidates of large parties choose whether to get on the primary ballot by winning substantial support at a party meeting, or petitioning. Candidates must decide in January of an election year which method to use.
Michelle Ferrigno Warren, a Democrat, running for U.S. Senate, decided to use the petition method, which requires 10,500 signatures. The petitioning period runs from late January through March 17. Due to the health crisis, she was not able to collect enough signatures. She filed a lawsuit in state court, Warren v Griswold, which is pending in Denver District Court.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has this story, which is mostly about Professor Jerome Segal, founder of the Bread & Roses Party. That party is on the ballot in Maryland, but nowhere else. Segal expresses the opinion that the Green Party and parties with similar ideas should not run for president in 2020 in swing states.
There is considerable evidence that left parties do not hurt the Democratic Party, but none of it is mentioned in the story. (1) political science research presented in “The Future of American Poilitics”, a 1950 book by Samuel Lubell, showed that Harry Truman would have lost to Thomas Dewey without the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace; (2) detailed poll analysis and election returns analysis from 2004 showed that Ralph Nader voters were more likely to vote for George W. Bush than John Kerry if Nader hadn’t been on the ballot; (3) the book “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely presents psychological experiments that show if three choices are available, and two of them are similar but one of the similar choices if clearly superior to the other, then that superior choice gains, versus the choice that is not similar; (4) the Communist Party in 1936 determined that they wanted Franklin Roosevelt to be re-elected and they facilitated that by running their own nominee, who used his attention in the public forum to encourage the defeat of the Republican nominee, Alf Landon.
On April 20, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence G. Berg, an Obama appointee, issued an injunction in Esshaki v Whitmer, e.d., 2:20cv-10831. It cuts the number of signatures needed for primary petitions by 50%, and extends the deadline from April 21 to May 8. It also partially allows for electronic signatures. Here is the 40-page opinion.
The opinion rebuts the idea that candidates should collect their petitions via postal mail. It says that the plaintiff, Eric Esshaki, who needed 1,000 signatures to get on the Republican primary ballot for U.S. House, tried that. He sent 1,000 letters to voters with an enclosed petition, and asked them to sign it and mail it back. He paid the postage both ways. That cost him $1.75 per letter, but it only yielded 15 signatures. The order says that works out to a cost of $115 per signature. The order also says that getting signatures this way means that willing recipients would need to get the petition into the postal delivery system, which is not necessarily easy when people are expected to remain at home. Furthermore, the order says, the postal service itself is affected by the virus. The order cites news stories about postal employees who are ill, and that as a result, postal mail is not as speedy as usual.
New York Assemblymember Rebecca A. Seawright, who represents part of New York city, seems to have failed to file a “cover sheet” on her primary petition. The State Board of Elections has recommended that she be removed from the June Democratic primary ballot. See this story. Thanks to Frank Morano for the link.
