North Dakota held a gubernatorial election in November 2012. Independent candidate Paul Sorum has been fighting in court to overturn the election results, on the grounds that both the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee should not have been on the ballot. The basis for this claim is that both candidates make paperwork errors when they filed for office. The Secretary of State had removed the Libertarian nominee, Roland Riemers, from the Libertarian primary ballot, for making the same error. Riemers later argued in the State Supreme Court that he should not have been removed from the ballot, but the State Supreme Court upheld the Secretary of State. Riemers got on the November ballot anyway, because after he was not permitted to run in the Libertarian primary, he petitioned to get on the ballot as an independent candidate.

As this newspaper story says, on March 3, the attorney for state government did not appear in court, and missed the argument, due to a misunderstanding about what time the case would be argued.

The November 2012 election returns for Governor were: Republican Jack Dalrymple 200,526; Democrat Ryan M. Taylor 109,047; independent Sorum 5,356; Riemers 2,616. Sorum argues that because the Republican and Democratic nominees were improperly on the ballot, their votes are invalid, and he is the legitimate governor. His case is filed in Mandan, Morton County, in district court.

On March 3, the Minnesota Senate Subcommittee on Elections, part of the Rules Committee, passed SF 585. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. It had been introduced over a year ago, and this is the first progress it has made in the Senate. The only midwest state that has approved a National Popular Vote Plan bill so far is Illinois.

According to this story, Pennsylvania Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hanger said at a Progressive Forum on February 28 that he supports ballot access reform. Unfortunately, the other five Democratic gubernatorial candidates do not support it.

Pennsylvania easily has the nation’s worst law, on the question of which parties are automatically on the November ballot. The median law of the 50 states says a party’s nominees are automatically on the general election ballot if that party polled 2% of the statewide vote in a previous election. But in Pennsylvania, a party is not ballot-qualified unless it has registration membership of 15% of the state total (over 1,000,000 registered members). This law is so extreme, if the same law existed in Idaho or Utah, the Democratic Party would not be ballot-qualified. If that law existed in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or the District of Columbia, the Republican Party would not be ballot-qualified.

The existing law on how a party remains on the ballot would be eased if SB 195 were to pass. Before 1986, Pennsylvania had an easy standard for a party to be ballot-qualified. For years between 1893 and 1986, a party was ballot-qualified if one of its statewide nominees in the previous election had polled a number of votes equal to 2% of the highest vote-getter’s vote. But in 1986 that easy standard was changed to 15% registration. Thanks to Randy LoBasso for the link.