According to Scotusblog, the U.S. Supreme Court may accept some cases for review at the end of August. See here. Normally the Court doesn’t do such things during its summer recess.
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Connecticut election law, sec. 9-249a, says “The names of the parties shall be arranged on ballots in the following order: (1) the party whose candidate for Governor polled the highest number of votes in the last-preceding election; (2) Other parties who had candidates for Governor in the last-preceding election, in descending order, according to the number of votes polled for each such candidate.” At the November 2, 2010 gubernatorial election, the Republican Party polled 560,874 votes; the Democratic Party polled 540,970 votes; the Working Families Party polled 26,308 votes; and the Independent Party polled 17,629 votes.
Notwithstanding the law, the Secretary of State, Denise Merrill, a Democrat, ruled last year that the Democratic Party should be listed first on 2012 and 2014 ballots. Because the Working Families Party nominee and the Democratic Party nominee were the same individual, Dan Malloy, the Secretary of State says the Democratic Party is the party whose candidate for Governor received the most votes. Malloy was elected, but he would have lost except that the Working Families Party nominated him, and thus he received votes under both the Democratic label and the Working Families label. Of course, by the Secretary of State’s logic, one could argue that the Working Families Party has an equal right to the top line.
In New York, which also uses fusion, the order of parties is also determined by the gubernatorial vote for each party, but New York determines the order by looking at the vote for each party, and not the cumulative vote for any particular candidate who has the nomination of more than one party.
On August 9, the Republican Party filed a lawsuit over the order of parties on the ballot. It is Republican Party of Connecticut v Merrill, superior court, Hartford, 027726. The case has a hearing on August 14, Tuesday. The Secretary of State has said publicly that the hearing date is very inconvenient, since August 14 is primary day in Connecticut. The Secretary of State says the Republican Party should have filed this case earlier.
As reported earlier, the New Mexico Secretary of State earlier determined that Jon Barrie does not have enough valid signatures on his petition to be on the November ballot. He is the U.S. Senate nominee of the Independent American Party. If he gets on the ballot, he will be the first candidate on a general election ballot for U.S. Senate in New Mexico, other than the Democratic and Republican nominees, since 1996.
This story explains that the state checked his petition using an automated program that automatically rejects all signatures unless they are an exact match with that voter’s name on the voter registration rolls. Thus, it rejected a signer whose name was “Jean” on one document, but “Jeanne” on the other; and it rejected a signer whose name was “Chris” on one document and “Christopher” on the other document. The story does not say if Barrie will sue to get on the ballot. Thanks to Doug Carver for the link.
On August 11-12, the Reform Party national convention was held in Philadelphia. The delegates chose Andre Barnett for President. Here is his campaign web page. Here is the wiki page about him. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York. The Reform Party is ballot-qualified in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. However, the Kansas Reform Party already nominated someone else for President this year.
The vice-presidential nominee is Ken Cross of Arkansas.
According to this article, an official of the Washington state Secretary of State’s office says the turnout in this month’s primary will be approximately 40%. If the final figures show exactly 40%, or lower, then that will be the lowest turnout in Washington state history in gubernatorial election years, at least back to 1936. Statistics for the number of voters registered in time for primaries, for years before 1936, were not preserved, so no one can calculate precise primary turnout earlier than 1936.
Washington state has always elected its Governors, and its other statewide executive offices, in presidential election years. Turnout (i.e., the number of people who vote in the primary, divided by the number of registered voters at the time of the primary) has been: 1936 64.11%, 1940 61.81%, 1944 44.27%, 1948 43.05%, 1952 53.43%, 1956 51.91%, 1960 49.64%, 1964 55.01%, 1968 44.98%, 1972 49.12%, 1976 43.24%, 1980 46.95%, 1984 40.31%, 1988 40.11%, 1992 45.80%, 1996 42.00%, 2000 40.80%, 2004 45.14%, 2008 42.60%.
Voting in Washington state is easier than ever, because for the first time in a gubernatorial year, this year every county sent every registered voter a ballot in the postal mail. Washington used the top-two system starting in 2008, and proponents insisted that turnout in primaries would rise. No incumbent is running for Governor in 2012, so one would have expected a higher turnout than in 2008, when the incumbent Democratic Governor was running for re-election, so there was no real contest in the Democratic primary in 2008.
On August 10, a Maryland circuit court upheld the ability of petitioning groups to make their blank petitions available on the internet, so that anyone with access to a computer can print his or her own copy of the petition, sign the petition, and also sign off as the circulator. This method was pioneered by https://MDpetitions.com. The particular petition at issue in the court case was one to force a referendum on the state’s most recent U.S. House redistricting plan. Democrats, who oppose the referendum, asked the court to invalidate the petitions that were prepared by the web page, but the lower court reject the position of the Democratic Party. The party will now appeal to the highest state court, the Maryland State Court of Appeals. Thanks to Doug McNeil for this news. Here is a story about the case.