On May 8, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed HB 2130, which repeals the restriction on out-of-state circulators.
Reply
Two statewide initiative petitions were submitted in Illinois last month. One provides for a nonpartisan redistricting commission, and one imposes term limits on state legislators. Both are the subject of attempts to have them disqualified, on the basis that neither subject is permitted. See this story, which gives details about the schedule for the challenges.
The San Diego Free Press has this very detailed analysis of the ideas of Ellen Brown. She is the Green Party candidate for California Treasurer.
On May 8, the Oklahoma House rejected the Senate’s amendments to HB 2134, and asked for a Conference Committee so that both houses can agree on a common version of the bill. HB 2134 is the bill that lowers the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from 5% of the last vote cast, to 2.5%. The Senate had agreed with that idea and both houses had passed the bill. But the Senate, when it passed the bill, added some amendments, which the House does not agree with.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s web page has unofficial election returns here (this particular link is to the statewide offices). They show that each of the three minor party declared write-in candidates for statewide office received the needed 500 write-in votes to be nominated.
For the Green Party, Anita Rios for Governor received 628 write-ins. For the Libertarians, Kevin Knedler received 716 for Secretary of State, and Bob Bridges received 731 for Auditor. Assuming these returns hold up in the official tally, all three candidates will be on the November ballot.
The two parties might have had more write-in candidates in their own primary, but for the restrictive law that requires write-in candidates to file a declaration of candidacy 72 days before the primary. There is no rational need for such a deadline to file as a declared write-in, and most states have a write-in declaration of candidacy deadline within a month of election day. In some states the deadline is the Friday before the election.
Current Ohio law requires a party to poll 2% for Governor, if it wishes to remain ballot-qualified for 2015 and 2016. The Green Party thus has a fair chance to meet this standard. It is always conceivable that in 2015, the Ohio legislature will amend the definition of “party” so that the vote test applies to any statewide partisan office, so the Libertarian showing for Secretary of State and Auditor may yet help the Libertarians to remain ballot-qualified beyond 2014 as well. Thanks to Tom Yager for pointing out that the write-in unofficial results are already on the Secretary of State’s web page.