Two Candidates for Los Angeles School Board with Substantial Support Fail to Obtain 500 Valid Signatures

Posted on by January 6, 2013
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Scott Folsom and Franny Parrish, two candidates for the Los Angeles School Board in the upcoming spring election, have failed to get on the ballot. The law requires 500 valid signatures. Each candidate had substantial support. Folsom is endorsed by the teachers union and Parrish is a longtime Parent-Teacher Association leader.

See this Los Angeles Times story, which says that each candidate hired professionals to get the needed 500 signatures. The professionals did produce signatures, but there weren’t enough valid ones. The story is somewhat confusing if not read carefully. The people hired to collect the signatures are also candidates for various offices, and they may not even live in the districts they are seeking to represent. If one reads the story hurredly, one might get the impression that Folsom and Parrish have residency problems, but they don’t. Thanks to AroundtheCapitol for the link.

Margin Between Obama and Romney was Less than 5% in Only Four States

Posted on by January 6, 2013
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This article about the final official presidential election returns does not have much new material in it, but it is interesting for pointing out that only four states had a presidential vote margin between the two major party nominees last year that was less than 5%. They were Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Pennsylvania still hasn’t released its write-in results but says it will do so. Vermont write-ins will only be known if any person goes to Montpelier and looks at the returns sent in by each of the towns. The Vermont Elections Director says she will then put the write-in totals on official stationery and the books that publish the national vote totals will accept that. One would think at least one person who wants to enhance the vote totals of Jill Stein, or Virgil Goode, or Stewart Alexander (three presidential candidates who definitely had supporters in Vermont) would take advantage of this opportunity. The Liberty Union Party nominated Alexander for President but he was kept off the ballot anyway because the new deadline law required ballot-qualified minor parties that nominate by convention to certify their presidential nominee by mid-June, whereas qualified parties that nominate by primary were permitted to do that as late as September.

Montana Secretary of State’s Omnibus Election Law Bill Has Some Ballot Access Improvements

Posted on by January 5, 2013
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Linda McCulloch, Montana Secretary of State, has asked the legislature to pass HB 120, which was introduced last month by Representative Pat Ingraham (R-Thompson Falls). The bill makes some improvements in ballot access. It moves the non-presidential independent petition deadline from March to late May. This action is being taken because last year, the March petition deadline was held unconstitutional. Assuming the bill passes, the new deadline will be a week before the June primary. Chances are this deadline is still unconstitutional; the Secretary of State would have been far safer if she had made the deadline on primary day.

The bill also eases the requirements for who may qualify as independent candidates for President and Vice-President. Existing law says that an independent candidate can’t have been “associated with a political party for one year prior to submission of the nomination petition.” The existing law then defines “associated with a political party” to mean running for office as a party member. This law was interpreted in 2004 to include presidential and vice-presidential candidates who petition in Montana. In 2004, the Montana Secretary of State told Peter Camejo that he could not be on the ballot as Ralph Nader’s running mate, because Camejo had run for Governor of California in October 2003 as a Green (in the special election caused by the California gubernatorial recall of Gray Davis). Therefore, Nader in Montana had to choose someone else for vice-president; he chose Karen Sanchirico, for Montana only.

The bill eases the restriction. It says the reference to having run for office as a party member only covers people who ran within Montana. If the bill had been in effect in 2004, Camejo’s run in California as a Green in 2003 would have not barred him from the Montana ballot.

The bill also says that all qualified parties may have their own primary, if they have any contested primaries. The existing law says that a ballot-qualified party can’t have a primary, even if it has two candidates for the same office, if it didn’t have candidates running in at least half the partisan races. The existing law was used to prevent the Montana Libertarian Party from having a primary in June 2012, even though two individuals filed for U.S. Senate in the Libertarian primary. Fortunately for the Libertarian Party, one of them dropped out. But if he hadn’t dropped out, the Secretary of State was going to print both Libertarians on the November ballot for U.S. Senate, which would have confused voters and split the Libertarian vote for that office. Thanks to Mike Fellows for news of HB 120.