On February 12, former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore left the race for the Republican presidential nomination. See this story.
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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.
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.
In 2012, the Libertarian Party of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit against the state law that tells newly-qualifying parties (but not old parties) that they must run a full slate of candidates. There is still no decision from the U.S. District Court. On the morning of February 9, 2016, Judge Andrea R. Wood said she would have the opinion out in the next 24 hours, but it has now been more than 48 hours and there is no decision. In the past she has made similar promises and failed to keep them.
On February 10, the Arizona House passed HB 2567, which eliminates the presidential primary for years after 2016. The vote was 37-22. Here is the summary of what the bill does. It also requires the national chairperson of each qualified party to inform the Secretary of State by September 1 of the identity of that party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Not every qualified party that nominates presidential candidates actually has a national chairman; there are many one-state political parties in the United States that participate in the presidential election in a single state.