Socialist Workers Party Announces National Ticket

Posted on by February 13, 2016
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On February 12, the Socialist Workers Party announced that its 2016 national ticket will be Alyson Kennedy for president, and Osborne Hart for vice-president. This is only the second time that the SWP has nominated a woman for President; the first time was in 1972, when Linda Jenness ran.

The Socialist Workers Party has now nominated a presidential candidate for 18 elections in a row. Besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, the only other U.S. political parties that ever did that were the Prohibition and Socialist Labor Parties.

The 2016 campaign now has four parties with “Socialist”, “Socialism”, or “Workers” in their name with presidential nominees. The others are the Socialist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Workers World Party. All of them except the Socialist Party have roots in the Trotskyist movement. Thanks to Jed Ziggler for the news.

U.S. District Court Strikes Down Law Requiring New Parties to Run a Full Slate of Candidates

Posted on by February 12, 2016
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On February 12, U.S. District Court Judge Andrea R. Wood issued a one-page order, granting the Illinois Libertarian Party’s motion for summary judgment that the Illinois full-slate law is unconstitutional. The decision will be issued later. The minute entry says, “For the reasons stated in the Memorandum Opinion and Order to follow, Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is granted and Defendants’ motion for summary judgment is denied.”

The full-slate law was passed in 1931. It was probably passed to thwart the Communist Party, which had a very popular activist named Claude Lightfoot, a leader of Chicago’s African-American community. He received 33,337 votes for State Representative in 1932, not enough to win, but a strong showing. At the time Illinois used cumulative voting for State House elections. Each district elected three candidates. Each party was permitted to run either one, two, or three candidates. Voters each had three votes, and they could give one vote to each of three candidates, or they could accumulate their votes to give two votes to one person and one to another; or they could give all three votes to a single candidate. Illinois had been using this system since 1870.

The law passed in 1931 said a previously unqualified party (such as the Communist Party, which was never a qualified party in Illinois because it could never get 5% for any statewide race) had to run three candidates for State House, thus preventing such a party from taking advantage of cumulative voting to the fullest extent. The law barred the Communist Party from running just one candidate for State House in a district; it had to run three candidates in any district it contested. Of course voters were still free to give all three of their votes to the most popular Communist and ignore the other two. But the state had a straight-ticket device at the time, and voters who used the straight-ticket device for the Communist Party were splitting their three votes among all three Communist candidates, thus lessening the support for the one candidate that the party hoped might win.

Illinois stopped using cumulative voting in 1982, but the full-slate law remained on the books. It forced newly-qualifying parties to run a full slate of statewide candidates, whether they wanted to or not. For example, in midterm years, it forced such parties to run for Attorney General, if they wanted to run for Governor, even though the party might not have a qualified candidate for Attorney General (only attorneys can run for that position). In county partisan elections, it forced parties that wanted to run for any countywide executive positions to run for State’s Attorney.

Willie Wilson Left off Mississippi Democratic Party by Mistake, Asks State Supreme Court to Order Reprint of Ballots

Posted on by February 11, 2016
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Mississippi holds its presidential primary on March 8. Willie Wilson petitioned to get on the ballot, and met the 500-signature requirement. The Democratic Party at first thought the petition needed 100 signatures in each of the old five U.S. House district, so they did not certify his name to the Secretary of State. Then the party became aware that there is no distribution requirement in effect, but by then some ballots had already been printed and mailed to overseas absentee ballots.

On February 10, the Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the mistake should be corrected. The Secretary of State argues that because some overseas absentee voters received a ballot without Wilson’s name, therefore it is impossible to correct the mistake. But the U.S. Supreme Court came to a contrary decision in Norman v Reed in 1992. It ordered Cook County general election ballots reprinted only thirteen days before the general election, because the Harold Washington Party nominees for Cook County office had been wrongfully left off the ballot. Many thousands of Cook County absentee ballots had already been cast at that point. There are other examples as well. See this story.