Maryland Delgate Alonzo Washington (D-Hyattsville) has introduced HB 1559. It lowers the number of signatures for a statewide independent candidate from 1% of the number of registered voters (now approximately 37,000 signatures) to exactly 10,000 signatures.
On March 10, proponents of a Maine initiative to legalize marijuana filed a lawsuit over whether their initiative has enough valid signatures. The law requires 61,123 signatures. Proponents submitted 99,229. The Secretary of State determined that only 51,543 signatures are valid. If the Secretary is correct, the petition had a validity rate of only 51.9%, despite the fact that a very large proportion of Maine adult residents are registered to vote.
The lawsuit is Birks v Dunlap, Kennebec County Superior Court. It charges that the Secretary of State invalidated all the work of certain notaries public, on the grounds that he didn’t believe the signatures of the notaries on the petition are similar to the signatures on their voter registration forms. Ironically, some of the notarizes signed various petitions, and their signatures as voters were not invalidated. Here is the Complaint.
On March 10, Judge Dan Pellegrini of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled that Ted Cruz is a natural-born citizen. The judge ruled that a “natural-born citizen” is one who is a citizen at birth and who therefore does not need to go through the naturalization process. See this story.
According to this story, a court in the U.S. Virgin Islands has restored the voter registration of John Yob. He had moved to the Virgin Islands so that he could seek election as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. Virgin Islands election officials had charged that he moved there too late to be a registered voter, but the court disagreed.
On March 10, the Oklahoma Senate passed SB 896. It eases the definition of “political party” from a group that polled 10% for the office at the top of the ballot, to one that polled 2.5% for the office at the top of the ballot. Only one Senator voted “No.” That Senator is Ron Sharp (R-Oklahoma City). He is in his first term.
