On May 18, the Commission on Presidential Debates placed this request for public comments on the CPD web page. The CPD web page is debates.org. The page specifically asks for public comments about who should be invited into general election presidential debates. Every reader of this web page should take the time to make a comment.
After one comments, the page makes it possible for the commenter to print out a copy of what he or she has just said. The comments will be open through July 10.
On May 18, the Oregon House passed HB 3475, the National Popular Vote Plan for presidential elections. The vote was 37-21. This is the first National Popular Vote Plan bill that has made any headway in 2015. Now the bill goes to the Senate Committee.
University of Oklahoma political scientist Ronald Keith Gaddie says in this article that Oklahoma’s legislature should have gone further this year with a ballot access improvement. The legislature lowered the petition for newly-qualifying parties from 5% of the last vote cast to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. Ironically, Oklahoma still has the nation’s most restrictive ballot access for presidential candidates running outside the major parties. No other state is higher than 2% of the last vote cast.
Gaddie is a former chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Oklahoma, and is an expert on election law. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for the link.
On March 2, 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Stewart Dalzell, a Bush Sr. appointee, struck down three Pennsylvania ballot access barriers, but only as applied to the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. The laws are: (1) the ban on out-of-state circulators; (2) the requirement that each petition sheet be notarized; (3) the prohibition on a voter signing for more than one minor party in any given election year.
(As to the notarization part of the decision, it interprets Pennsylvania election law to not require notarization of petitions, but it also says that if the law did require notarization, it would be unconstitutional. The law says the circulators must sign the petitions in their capacity as “affiants”. The state has always believed an “affiant” is someone who appears in front of a notary, but the decision says that is not necessarily so).
Judge Dalzell ruled against the minor parties on the issue of whether unregistered voters can sign petitions, and in a supplementary decision on May 11, he upheld the law that doesn’t permit signers from different counties on the same sheet. The case is Green Party of Pennsylvania et al v Aichele, e.d., 2:14cv-3299.
He also ruled that some of the other problems are moot, because the state has already voluntarily eased them. The state already agreed that the signers don’t need to include the year, when they fill in their date of signing. Also the state already agreed to drop language from the petition that implies it is still unconstitutional for circulators to live outside the district or outside the state. Finally, the state already agreed to eliminate blank space for presidential elector candidates on the state-printed petition forms, if the group doesn’t have candidates for presidential elector. Eliminating the spaces for presidential electors increases space for more signature blank lines on a single sheet.
Oddly, the relief is limited only to the plaintiffs in the case, the Green and Libertarian Parties. There will probably be new lawsuits filed by other plaintiffs, which probably will result in an expansion of the relief to all petitioning groups, at least for general election petitions.
On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear O’Keefe v Chisholm, 14-872. Wisconsin state courts will now continue to determine whether the Wisconsin Club for Growth illegally coordinated campaign spending strategy with Governor Scott Walker during the campaign to recall him.
See this story, which gives background for the case. Individuals and groups who are the target of the investigation had asked the federal courts to protect them from the methods used in the investigation. The lead plaintiff in the federal case, Eric O’Keefe, is a former national director of the Libertarian Party.
