On June 16, the Maine House passed LD 31 by 107-36. It amends the State Constitution to add a U.S. House distribution requirement for statewide initiative petitions. Currently initiatives need a petition of 10% of the last gubernatorial vote, but they can be collected anywhere. The bill says they need 10% from each of the two U.S. House districts.
If the Senate also passes it, then the voters would vote on it.
Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin launched his candidacy on August 8, 2016. He got on the ballot in eleven states. In those eleven states, he received 510,002 votes, and the total presidential vote in those eleven states was 21,004,501. Therefore, in the states where he was on the ballot, he received 2.43% of the total valid votes cast.
He was not on the ballot in Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. If those states had voted for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would have received a majority of the electoral college votes.
If McMullin had been on the ballot in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and if his support in those states had matched his support in the states in which he was on the ballot, then he would have received, respectively: Michigan 116,623; Pennsylvania 148,916; Wisconsin 71,767. Those totals are far larger than the margin by which Trump defeated Clinton in all three states. The margins between Trump and Clinton were: Michigan 10,704; Pennsylvania 44,292; Wisconsin 22,748.
McMullin’s campaign focused on persuading Republicans to vote for McMullin instead of Trump. It is reasonable to assume that where McMullin was on the ballot, a large majority of the people who voted for him were voters who would otherwise have voted Republican for President. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that if restrictive ballot access laws had not kept McMullin off the ballot in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton would now be President.
An actual example exists for Minnesota. Clinton carried Minnesota by 44,765 votes. McMullin was on in Minnesota and got 53,076 votes there.
McMullin had the capacity to complete petitions in states in which 5,000 signatures were required. He successfully got that many valid signatures in Kentucky and Virginia, both of which require 5,000. Pennsylvania only required 5,000 signatures, and Wisconsin only required 2,000, but McMullin couldn’t qualify in those two states because the deadlines were too early. Pennsylvania’s was August 1 and Wisconsin’s was August 2.
States could have had late August or early September petition deadlines, without harming election administration. In 2016, these six states had September deadlines: Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Rhode Island (the Florida deadline was the minor party deadline, not the independent deadline). These states had deadlines in the last week of August: Idaho, Oregon, Virginia, and Wyoming.
On June 15, the California Assembly passed SB 96 by 52-27. It makes it more difficult for recall petitions to succeed, by letting signers remove their names after the petition drive is over. Later the same day the Senate concurred in the Assembly amendments, by a vote of 26-11, so the bill now goes to Governor Jerry Brown.
There is currently a recall petition circulating in California against one particular Democratic State Senator. The bill takes effect immediately. However, there are court precedents that say it violates due process to make it more difficult for a petition to succeed, if the bill takes effect in the middle of a particular petition drive. One of those precedents, Hudler v Austin, was summarily affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. 419 F Supp 1002, 1013-14 (e.d. Michigan 1976); 430 U.S. 924 (1977). In that case, the Michigan legislature had made it more difficult for newly-qualifying parties to get on the ballot, and that bill had been passed in April 1976. A federal court upheld the new requirements but said due process demanded that the new law not be applied for the 1976 election.
The Utah Green Party is mostly finished with its party petition, and expects to submit the petition during July. This will be the first time the Green Party has been a qualified party in Utah since 2012.
Only one statewide race is on the ballot in Utah in 2018, U.S. Senate. This means the party must poll 2% for that office in 2018, or it won’t remain on the ballot for 2020. Utah elects all its statewide state offices in presidential years. If a party gets 2% for a statewide office, it remains on the ballot for the next two elections, so generally it is better strategy for a newly-qualifying party to qualify during a presidential year, when it is far easier to poll 2% for one of the five or six races up. However, the Green Party didn’t petition in Utah in 2016; instead it put Jill Stein on the ballot as an independent candidate.
On May 23, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 44. It makes two somewhat unrelated changes. It restores the old requirement that judicial candidates, seeking a place on a statewide primary ballot, need 950 signatures even if they pay the filing fee. Such petitions need 50 signatures from each of the 19 judicial districts. In the past this petition requirement has sometimes discouraged Democrats from running a full slate of partisan judicial nominees. The petition was not in effect during 2016 and the Democrats did run a full slate in 2016, for the first time since 2002. Now that the petition requirement is back, that makes it somewhat more likely that Democrats won’t run a full slate in 2018.
Also, SB 44 says that candidate petitions need not be checked for validity, unless some files a challenge. If someone does file a challenge, the challenge must state explicitly what signatures are invalid. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.
