On July 11, the Michigan State Appeals Court ruled in Wilcoxon v City of Detroit Election Commission, 317012, that signatures on nominating petitions are valid even if the signer fails to enter the date of signing. The decision says that the circulator is free to add the date. Here is the 12-page opinion. This opinion is similar to one won in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Eliot Spitzer, seeking the Democratic nomination for New York City Comptroller, needed 3,750 valid signatures of registered Democrats by July 11. Since he started getting signatures only five days before the deadline, his campaign paid petitioners $800 per day. New York state election law forbids paying petitioners on a per-signature basis. See this story, written by a college student who helped collect the signatures. The student reports that he collected over 200 signatures in his two days of work.
The Spitzer campaign submitted approximately 27,000 signatures on the deadline. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On July 12, the New York State Board of Elections informed the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, that it has decided not to appeal Credico v New York State Board of Elections. The Board had earlier said it would appeal, and had obtained an extension of time to write its brief.
Credico is the decision, handed down on June 19, that struck down New York’s discriminatory law regarding which candidates may be listed twice on general election ballots. The law struck down said that if two ballot-qualified parties nominate the same person for any particular office, that candidate is listed twice on the ballot; but if two unqualified parties nominate the same person, that candidate can only be listed once.
The decision is valuable as a precedent that even if a ballot access burden is not severe, it is still unconstitutional if there is no genuine state interest in the discriminatory policy.
The Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, ever since 1920, has published a booklet after each congressional election, showing the number of votes cast for each candidate for federal office in that particular election. When the election is a presidential election, the title of the booklet is “Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of (insert date).” When the election is just a congressional election, the title is “Statistics of the Congressional Election of (insert date).”
The people who prepare this book also prepare charts at the end of the book, giving the vote for each party for each of the three types of election (president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House).
Unfortunately, the people who prepare the book have a long-standing prejudice against minor parties. The columns in the summary charts are supposedly strictly according to party label, but this principle is not applied with uniformity. The Green Party has a slightly different name in some states. In Oregon, it is the Pacific Green Party; in Maine it is the Green Independent Party. Therefore, the charts in the back of the book don’t show Jill Stein’s votes in the “Green Party” column; it puts her votes into the “other” column. And, the vote total at the bottom of the “Green Party” column therefore doesn’t include Stein’s votes from Maine and Oregon.
But, the Democratic Party also has a slightly different name in two states. In North Dakota it appears on the ballot as “Democratic-NPL Party.” In Minnesota, it appears as “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.” If the booklet were consistent, it would not put President Obama’s vote in the “Democratic” column; it would put his votes in the “other” column. But the booklet does not do that; it lists Obama’s votes from those two states in the “Democratic” column. This inconsistent application of the rules are not a new feature with the 2012 booklet; booklets for past elections have the same flaw.
There also some factual inaccuracies in the 2012 book, which will be detailed in a longer article in the August 1, 2013 print issue of Ballot Access News.
Maine will hold a special election to fill the vacancy in the State Senate, 19th district, later this year. The date hasn’t been set yet. Maine law lets qualified parties nominate in special legislative elections by party caucus. The Democratic, Republican, and Green Parties have all arranged to hold caucuses for that purpose. See this story.
