Eleven Democratic Presidential Candidates File New York Petitions

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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February 6 was the deadline for petitions for Democratic presidential primary candidates in New York. For Democrats (but not other parties) 5,000 signatures are required. Eleven Democrats filed: Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang. See the State Board of Elections web page here, although as of the evening of February 6, it isn’t complete. Thanks to Darcy Richardson for the news about the three who filed but who are not yet listed.

Republican presidential candidates get on the ballot by filing a request by February 25, asserting that they are nationally recognized candidates as shown by media coverage. A majority of Republican members of the State Board of Elections must approve the request. Or, they can also submit a petition. The only Republican who has submitted a petition is Rocky De La Fuente.

Independent Voters Project Attorney Does Not Appear in California State Court Case Demanding a Presidential Primary Ballot that Lists All Candidates

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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In July 2019, the Independent Voters Project filed a lawsuit in California state court, arguing that the State Constitution requires the state to print presidential primary ballots that list all the presidential candidates running in any party’s presidential primary ballot. Last year the San Bernardino County Superior Court refused to issue an injunction to force the state to do that. It also set a conference to discuss how the trial on that issue will be handled.

At the trial-setting conference, the attorney for the Independent Voters Project did not make an appearance. It is possible the court will levy a sanction; that will be discussed on May 21, 2020. The case is Boydston v Padilla, civ-ds-1921480.

New California Registration Data

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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On February 6, the California Secretary of State released a registration tally for January 3, 2020. All qualified political parties gained registration as a percentage of the total (except for Green), and the number of independents declined. Here is a link.

The percentages are: Democratic 44.59%; Republican 23.71%; American Independent 2.94%; Libertarian .86%; Peace & Freedom .46%; Green .44%; unknown .50%; other .59%; independent 25.90%.

The percentages at the last tally, the October 1, 2019 tally, were: Democratic 44.06%; Republican 23.58%; American Independent 2.86%; Libertarian .84%; Green .45%; Peace & Freedom .44%; unknown .47%; other .56%; independent 26.74%.

This is the first time since the Green Party gained qualified status that the Peace & Freedom Party has more registrants than the Green Party.

For the unqualified parties, the Common Sense Party showed considerable growth, although it is still far from being qualified. It now has 9,819 registrants, whereas at the previous tally it had 5,519. It is too late for it to qualify for the congressional and state office 2020 primary, but it can still qualify to have a presidential nominee if it increases its registration to approximately 68,000 by July 2020.

The Constitution Party appears to have suffered because some counties seemed to have showed zero registrants, whereas it had registrants in those same counties at the last tally. This may be because the registrants are registered “Constitution” but the party’s paperwork, filed late last year, shows the name of the party is the “Constitution Party of California”, so some counties take that literally and don’t include “Constitution”.

U.S. District Court Upholds At-Large Elections for Alabama Judicial Races

Posted on by February 6, 2020
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On February 5, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins upheld Alabama’s at-large partisan elections for State Supreme Court and State Appeals Court. The decision is 120 pages. Alabama State Conference of NAACP v State, m.d., 2:16cv-731.

Only two days before, the Eleventh Circuit had issued a ruling in this case, saying the lawsuit is not procedurally flawed. The new U.S. District Court decision complies with that ruling, and says that the lawsuit is procedurally valid, but that the NAACP did not prove that at-large elections injure African-American voters and candidates, even though no African-American has ever been elected to a state appeals court, and only twice in history has an African-American been elected to the State Supreme Court. Both victories were more than a quarter of a century ago.