On September 17, the Kansas Board of Objections certified President Obama for the ballot. See this story. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the news.
11
According to the New York State Board of Elections, the ballot-qualified Independence Party has decided not to nominate any presidential candidate. This is the first time a ballot-qualified party in New York has declined to nominate anyone for President since 1984, when the Right to Life Party had declined to nominate anyone for President.
Before that, the last time in New York state was when the Conservative Party nominated no one. However, the only reason the New York Conservative Party ran no one for President in 1968 was that the party wanted to cross-endorse the Republican nominee (Richard Nixon) but the New York Republican Party refused to let the Conservative Party cross-endorse the Republican slate. At the time the Republican Party was very hostile to the Conservative Party, and wanted to injure the Conservative Party by forcing it to leave its presidential spot on the ballot blank.
The New York Independence Party nominated John McCain in 2008. In prior years it nominated various independent or minor party presidential candidates (Ralph Nader in 2004, John Hagelin in 2000, Ross Perot in 1996).
On September 16, Public Policy Polling released this poll for the presidential election in Virginia. See question 7, in which respondents were given the choice of all five presidential candidates who are on the Virginia ballot. The results are: President Obama 49%, Mitt Romney 45%, Gary Johnson 2%, Virgil Goode 1%, Jill Stein 1%, undecided 3%. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
It has now been 18 months since the Libertarian Party National Committee sued the Federal Election Commission, over the FEC’s refusal to let the Libertarian Party have full access to a bequest made to the party. The bequest was made by Raymond Burrington, who died on April 26, 2007. He had left $217,734 to the party. The FEC has interpreted federal campaign laws to mean that the party cannot receive the bequest all in one year. Instead, the money can only be given to the party by the estate at the rate of approximately $30,000 per year, because the law limits living donors to giving that much to a national political party every calendar year.
The two sides have been arguing over which court should hear the case. Because the Libertarian Party takes the position that it should be able to use the bequest in support of its nominees for federal office, as well as for general party expenses, the original 3-judge panel appointed earlier was dissolved. The federal campaign law passed in 1974 says “substantial” legal challenges to federal contribution limits to candidates must be heard by an en banc panel of all the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals. If the case is not “substantial”, then a single U.S. District Court Judge can dismiss the case. The two sides have been battling over whether the case presents a “substantial” issue.
The FEC argues the case should be dismissed because no important constitutional rights are at stake, and that “the deceased have no constitutional rights.” The party counters that this case is about the rights of the party to receive the money.
The FEC says if the Libertarian Party wins the case, there is a danger of corruption because wealthy individuals could try to obtain favors from elected members of Congress, and/or from the President, by promising to leave a large bequest to that politician’s political party. Of course, this argument seems to validate the party’s argument that this case is “substantial.”
On August 1, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow ruled that the six plaintiffs in Field v Bowen must pay attorneys fees to the groups that intervened in the lawsuit in support of the top-two system. The amount is $243,279. The six plaintiffs include Rodney Martin, chair of the Reform Party of California; Jeff Mackler, leader of the San Francisco Bay Area branch of Socialist Action; Steve Chessin, president of Californians for Electoral Reform; and Richard Winger.
Field v Bowen attacked two particularly oppressive aspects of the California top-two open primary law: (1) the original law said write-ins in November for Congress or state office could never be counted, but the state continued to let candidates file as declared write-in candidates and continued to print write-in space on the ballot; (2) the law said that only candidates who are registered members of qualified parties could have their party mentioned on the ballot next to the names of that candidate. Nor can such candidates even have the word “independent” on the ballot; they can only have “no party preference”, which for many is an untrue statement. Earlier this month, a Washington state court ruled that it is unconstitutional to print “no party preference” for a Socialist Alternative candidate for the legislature, and ordered the Secretary of State to print the candidate’s party name on the ballot next to her name.
But the California state courts upheld the write-in and label provisions of the California law last year, and Field v Bowen is no longer an active case, except for the matter of attorneys fees.
California state courts judges are justifiably unhappy that the state budget crisis has meant reduced funding for the court system, which has created many severe problems with administration of the courts. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the California state court judges believe that the top-two open primary will result in a legislature that will have fewer opponents of tax increases. Therefore, these judges appear to be biased in favor of the top-two system. This is best illustrated by Judge Karnow’s shocking and punitive decision that we six plaintiffs must pay $243,279 to the law firm Nielson, Merksamer, which represents the groups and individuals who intervened in the case.
The plaintiffs asked for reconsideration. In response, Nielsen Merksamer has argued that we had no right to ask for reconsideration, and a hasty acceleration of the matter, only set on Friday afternoon, September 14, has pushed a hearing forward to Monday, September 17, at 11 a.m. at the San Francisco Civil Superior Court at the northwest corner of McAllister and POLK Streets. Here is a FairVote story about the matter. UPDATE: the original post erroneously said the court is at McAllister and Larkin.