On September 28, the First Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court, that New Hampshire’s law, making it a crime for a voter in the voting booth to photograph his or her voted ballot and then show that picture to anyone else, violates the First Amendment. Here is the decision in Rideout v Gardner. Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.
Indiana has one of the worst ballot access laws in the nation. No one has completed a statewide general election petition, either independent or unqualified party, for sixteen years. Indiana is one of only four states in which Ralph Nader never appeared on the ballot, even though he was the third-place finisher in 2000, 2004, and 2008.
Ballot access activist Craig Marolf, who lives in Indiana, has already started meeting with state legislators. If you wish to work with him, especially if you live in Indiana, contact him at constitutionalcraig@yahoo.com. It is important to be talking to state legislators now, because the Indiana legislative rules require all 2017 bills to be introduced by late December 2016.
A mediation conference was held on September 27 in the Ninth Circuit’s election law case, Soltysik v Padilla, 16-55758. The issue is the California law that lets some candidates for Congress and partisan state office have their party affiliation on the ballot, but bars this for other candidates for the same offices. The U.S. District Court had upheld the law. The plaintiffs are registered Socialists, but when they run for office, their party label on the ballot is “party preference: none.”
On September 29, both sides told the Ninth Circuit clerk that mediation had failed, so now the case will proceed to be briefed in the Ninth Circuit.
On September 30, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, a Carter appointee, ruled that Alabama cannot require independent candidates, and unqualified parties, to comply with the 3% petition requirement, in instances when the petitioning time is limited. Hall v Merrill, m.d., 2:13cv-663. In this particular case, James Hall tried to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for U.S. House in a special election held in 2013. He needed 5,938 valid signatures and was only able to get 2,835. There were only 56 days between the date the deadline was set, and the deadline. However, the state argued that Hall really had 106 days to petition, because he could have been petitioning as soon as the incumbent member of Congress said he would resign soon, in the middle of his term.
Hall testified that he did try to collect signatures before the date of the special election was announced, but until the date of the special election was announced, virtually no member of the public was aware there would soon be a special congressional election, and it was thus especially difficult to get signatures during that period.
The decision is 68 pages and is very thorough. It points out that for a regularly-scheduled election, an independent candidate could take as long as ten years to finish his or her petition; the state doesn’t set a start date so there is essentially infinite time to collect the signatures. That is very different from a special election, which cannot be predicted.
As of noon, Friday, September 30, the California Republican Party still hasn’t submitted its list of presidential elector candidates to the Secretary of State. The American Independent Party has already submitted its list of elector candidates. The lists are due October 1, but because that is Saturday, the actual deadline is Monday, October 3.
Until the Republican list is submitted, the public won’t know whether the names of the presidential elector candidates for each party’s slate match. Both parties nominated Donald Trump for President. But just because two parties nominate the same presidential candidate, it does not follow that each party necessarily files the same slate of presidential electors as the other party. This year in New York, both the Independence Party and the Libertarian Party nominated Gary Johnson. But each party submitted separate lists of elector candidates.
If the two California slates do not match, it will be impossible for California to know how many votes each candidate for presidential elector received. U.S. Code Title 3, section 6, requires each state to tell the National Archives how many valid votes each candidate for presidential elector receives. California does not let voters choose which slate of electors to vote for. Trump is on the ballot with only one box for the voter to choose. He is on as “Donald J. Trump, Republican, American Independent.” By contrast, in New York, the ballot has two Johnson squares: one square for voters to choose the Independence Party electors, and another square for the voters to choose the Libertarian electors.
