New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has called a special election to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat for October 16, 2013. The primary will be in August. See this story.
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On June 4, the Connecticut legislature passed HB 6580, which outlaws fusion unless both parties had polled at least 15,000 votes for one of the state statewide offices at the previous gubernatorial election. The bill passed the House on June 1 and the Senate on June 4. It also alters campaign finance laws. See this story, which is not accurate when it says the bill entirely bans fusion. “Fusion” means the practice of two parties jointly nominating the same candidate, so that his or her name appears on the November ballot with both party labels.
Assuming the Governor signs the bill and it takes effect, it is probably unconstitutional. States are free to ban fusion if they wish, but they cannot do so in a discriminatory manner. For instance, the Third Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law in 1999 that permitted fusion between two large parties but not fusion between a large party and a small party, in Reform Party of Allegheny County v Allegheny County Department of Elections, 174 F.3d 305.
This is the same bill that temporarily had another provision, making it illegal for a party to have “Independent” or “Independence” in its name, but that provision was deleted from the final bill.
In 2010, the Working Families Party and the Independent Party each polled over 15,000 votes for some or all of the statewide state offices, so they retain the ability to engage in fusion. But the Libertarian Party’s highest statewide vote in 2010 was 14,748, and the Green Party’s highest was 10,328, so this bill eliminates their ability to engage in fusion. Those two parties don’t generally engage in fusion anyway, and the Green Party never does, but it is still unconstitutional to remove the ability from them and retain it for certain other parties. The bill also discriminates against newly-formed parties because they could not have met the requirement in the past gubernatorial election, because they didn’t exist then.
On June 4, a South Carolina conference committee passed SB 2, the “Equal Access to Ballot Act.” The bill is helpful, although one could argue that its title exaggerates what it actually does. It provides that all candidates, incumbents and challengers alike, are treated the same relative to filing campaign finance documents. Under current law, incumbents didn’t have the same requirements to file certain campaign finance documents that challengers did.
More important, the bill provides that when a legally required campaign finance document is not filed in a timely way, the candidate is fined, but still appears on the primary ballot. Assuming this bill now passes both Houses and is signed into law, it would prevent a recurrence of what happened in 2012, when over 200 candidates for state and local office were kept off primary ballots because they had not filed certain campaign finance documents both in paper and electronically. See this story. The conference committee had been appointed May 2, and it took over a month before it finalized the bill language.
If South Carolina truly had an “equal access to ballot” law, it would let independent candidates get on the general election ballot without a petition, if they paid the same filing fee that primary candidates must file. That idea was not discussed and has nothing to do with the contents of the actual bill. South Carolina petitions for independent candidates for the legislature are tied with Georgia and North Carolina for being the most restrictive in the nation. They require 5% of the number of registered voters to sign the petition for legislative independent candidates.
On May 22, Robert Raymond, a professional petitioner, filed his brief in the Ninth Circuit in Raymond v Fenumiai, 13-35090. The issue is Alaska’s ban on out-of-state petitioners, which only includes ballot measures, not candidates. The U.S. District Court had ruled that Raymond lacks standing because he didn’t specify any particular initiative petition he wished to work on. Therefore, his brief to the Ninth Circuit is on the issue of whether he has standing.
There are now ballot access cases pending in the Ninth Circuit from four states, Alaska, Arizona, California, and Nevada. The Arizona case concerns whether states that provide primaries to five parties can just list two of those parties on the voter registration forms. The California case includes one filed by the Peace & Freedom Party over presidential qualifications, and one filed by a California candidate on the subject of discriminatory ballot label laws. The Nevada case concerns whether “None of the Above” is unconstitutional unless it is altered to provide that if it wins, it is binding.
U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg died on June 3. Because New Jersey was holding a gubernatorial election anyway on November 4, 2013, a date that is more than 70 days in the future, there will probably be a special U.S. Senate election to fill the vacant seat on that day. The normal petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, this year for state office, is June 4, 2013. Obviously the special U.S. Senate election will have a different deadline, one that is closer to the general election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the news about the special election. See this story.
Ian Milhiser, a Policy Analyst for the Center for American Progress, has noticed that New Jersey election law appears to contradict itself on the date of the special election. 19:3-26 says because the seat became vacant more than 70 days before the November 4, 2013 regularly-scheduled state election, the U.S. Senate election must be that day also. But 19:27-6 says that special U.S. Senate elections will only be held if the vacancy was created more than 70 days before the primary, which this year is June 4, 2013.