It has now been three days since a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles invalidated California’s law on how a party gets on the ballot, and the only news sources that have reported the decision are Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog, and Ballot Access News, and the web page of the ACLU of Southern California. The ACLU, which won this case, put out a press release, but it seems to have been ignored by California’s daily newspapers.
Lane County, Oregon, is the 4th most populous county in Oregon, and contains Eugene. Lane County voters will elect a circuit court judge by write-in vote in the upcoming election. See this story. The incumbent judge failed to qualify for the ballot because of a paperwork error.
Four individuals have announced that they are running for the seat. Oregon no longer has a procedure by which individuals file as declared write-in candidates. Instead, write-in votes are not counted in most elections, except that the total number of write-ins for all candidates is tallied, with no breakdown for how many votes any particular candidate received. But, section 254.500(b) says that when no candidate qualifies to have his or her name printed on the ballot, a tally must be made for each candidate who receives as much as one write-in vote.
This year, in Georgia, 77% of the state legislative races have only one candidate on the ballot. Even for Georgia, which almost always has one-candidate elections in over half the state legislative races, this is shocking.
Georgia requires a petition signed by 5% of the number of registered voters to place anyone on the ballot for state legislature (or for U.S. House, or for local partisan office), except that the nominees of parties that polled 20% of the vote in the last election for President or Governor need not petition. Georgia also requires a filing fee of 3% of the office’s annual salary, even for candidates who are required to petition. This fee is the second highest filing fee in the nation for non-presidential office.
Legislation to ameliorate these ballot access laws has been repeatedly defeated in the Georgia legislature during the last 40 years. A measure to reduce the petition was defeated in 2012. It would have reduced the petition to 5% of the last presidential vote.
That a fairly populous state like Georgia can hold one-candidate elections in over three-fourths of the legislative districts is, sadly, an indictment of the U.S. Supreme Court, which has repeatedly refused to hear challenges to these laws. It is also an indictment of civic leadership in the state, and, ultimately, an indictment of the people of Georgia, for seeming not to notice or care that their own right to vote for such an important office as state legislator is so curtailed.
There are few states that have been less supportive of independent candidates than Indiana. Indiana has had government-printed ballots since 1889, and no independent since 1889 has ever been elected to the state legislature. No independent candidate has ever even appeared on the ballot for Governor or U.S. Senator. Indiana has always had a straight-ticket device, which injures independent candidates. Also, Indiana has always had very strong political parties. Because Indiana has never had registration by party, there is no data on how many voters would register “independent” if voters registered by party in Indiana.
However, it is likely that an independent candidate will be elected next month to be LaGrange County Coroner, a partisan post. LaGrange County is predominantly Republican. However, the current Coroner, a Republican, is term-limited. No one ran in the Republican primary to replace him this year, but the Republican Party nominated someone by party meeting after the primary was over. However, the party’s paperwork was insufficient, and the Republican nominee was kept off the November ballot.
The Deputy Coroner, Jeff Helmuth, submitted petitions to be an independent candidate, but most observers assumed the Democratic nominee for Coroner, Bob Reichard, would defeat Helmuth. However, Reichard died suddenly on October 15 while visiting the Philippines. The Democratic Party has the legal right to place a new nominee on the ballot, but if the party does that before November 1, the county would reprint ballots at a cost to taxpayers of $20,000. LaGrange County is a small-population county and the Democratic Party does not want to cause the county that expense. Therefore, the party will probably leave Reichard’s name on the ballot. Straight-ticket votes for the Democratic Party will count toward the candidate that the Democratic Party chooses to replace Reichard, if the party waits until November to name a new candidate. But non-straight-ticket votes for Reichard don’t count for this purpose. So, chances are, the independent candidate will win the election.
John B. Anderson has this op-ed in the October 19 Sacramento Bee, advocating that all states use Instant-Runoff Voting for presidential elections. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
