Politico has this story about efforts to persuade presidential electors to vote for someone other than the winner of the popular vote in their own state. There is not a great deal of new news in the story, except for the point that a team of attorneys will defend any such electors if their state fines them for voting differently than expected. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
On November 30, U.S. House member Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) introduced HB 6409, which eliminates restrictions on how much an individual may donate to the campaign of a candidate for federal office. The bill also provides that if the contributor has contributed at least $200 to a particular candidate, the candidate must disclose that within 24 hours of receipt of the contribution.
A similar bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Ted Cruz. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for this news.
Tennessee defines a political party as “at least one of whose candidates for an office to be elected by voters of the entire state has received a number of votes equal to at least 5% of the total number of votes cast for gubernatorial candidates in the most recent election of governor.”
Tennessee, like most states, elects its governors in mid-term years. In 2014, the total number of votes cast for Governor was 1,353,728. Five percent of that number is 67,687 votes. Gary Johnson last month polled over 70,000 votes in Tennessee. His ballot label was “independent.”
There is no real precedent as to whether a Tennessee candidate with the independent label, who polls the needed number of votes, can use that vote to qualify his or her party, if it wasn’t already ballot-qualified. Tennessee didn’t allow independent presidential candidates until 1976. Since then, no independent candidate for president who was the nominee of a political party has met that percentage, except for Ross Perot in 1996, and now Gary Johnson this year. After the November 1996 election, the Reform Party of Tennessee did not ask the state to recognize it as a qualified party, so there is no past ruling or precedent. The Tennessee Libertarian Party may ask the state for a ruling.
In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Socialist Workers Party is entitled to an exemption from reporting its campaign contributors, because the evidence showed that persons identified with the SWP were likely to be harassed. The Federal Election Commission has been exempting the SWP ever since. However, the FEC always sets a time limit at which the exemption expires. It is about to expire. The party has again asked for an extention. See this article in The Militant, the party’s weekly newspaper.
Other parties that have got similar exemptions have been the Communist, Freedom Socialist, and Socialist Alternate Parties. However, none of them has had any candidates for partisan office in many years.
On November 30, the Washington Secretary of State said the Libertarian Party is not a ballot-qualified party, even though 5% for president gains that status and even though her web page says Gary Johnson got 5.01%. Even though the Washington Secretary of State has not reported any presidential write-ins since 1992, or even acknowledged the existence of any presidential write-ins since 1992, now she says the write-ins (the number of which she has not revealed) will pull Johnson’s percentage below 5%.
It is likely the Libertarian Party will sue, because the presidential write-ins are not valid, because they are not in support of any particular slate of candidates for presidential elector. The party may also ask the legislature to lower the vote test. The median vote test of the 50 states is 2%.
