The Ohio Green Party and the Ohio Constitution Party, which have intervened in the pending Libertarian Party ballot access case, filed this brief on December 23. The issue is whether the 2014 ballot access restrictions passed last month can be enforced for the 2014 election. The oral argument in this case will be on January 6, and the judge has promised an opinion shortly afterwards.
On December 23, the Hawaii Attorney General held a press conference to announce his formal opinion 13-2. It says that new or previously unqualified parties can have their party label on the ballot (next to the name of their presidential candidate) when they use the independent presidential petition procedure. That procedure has a very permissive September deadline. Previously it was generally understood that candidates who used that procedure could only have the label “Non-partisan” on the ballot.
The Attorney General’s press release credits the lawsuit filed by the Justice Party last year for causing his office to issue this opinion. The press release says the Elections Office had been interpreting the law to print party labels for candidates who use the independent presidential procedure, all along. But it was more ambiguous than the press release suggests, because no group or candidate had completed the September independent presidential petition in Hawaii since 1992. States often re-interpret their laws, when the previous precedent was long ago.
For example, in 2013, Kansas re-interpreted its law on how a party remains on the ballot in years when President is the only office on the ballot. The former Secretary of State had ruled in 2000 that parties need not poll 1% for President in order to remain on. But the current Secretary of State reversed that, and removed the Reform Party from the ballot in 2013.
Also in 2013, New Mexico re-interpreted its law on how a party remains on the ballot. The new rule is that parties only get one election when they petition for ballot access. But the former Secretary of State had permitted a party to be on the ballot for two elections.
Also, in 2008, Massachusetts re-interpreted its law on whether unqualified parties can substitute a new presidential or vice-presidential candidate, when the candidate listed on the petition withdraws. The new ruling was to deny substitution, even though in 1996 and 2000 and 2004, the state had permitted it.
And, in 2012, Michigan re-interpreted its understanding of whether the sore loser law applies to the presidential primary. In 1980 the state did not believe the sore loser law applied to presidential primaries, but in 2012, it changed that interpretion.
On December 10, the Montana Supreme Court ordered both sides in MEA-MFT v State of Montana, OP 13-789, to file briefs by January 9, 2014. This is the lawsuit on whether the top-two election measure should remain on the November 2014 ballot.
The groups that filed the lawsuit, which argues that the measure is invalid, are the MEA-MFT (a union), the Montana AFL-CIO, the Montana Public Employees Association, the Montana Human Rights Network, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. One of the attorneys for the plaintiffs is John Morrison, who was Montana’s elected State Auditor 2000-2004.
The lawsuit argues that the top-two measure is invalid because: (1) an election law says the title of a ballot measure can’t be longer than 100 words, but this measure’s title is 196 words; (2) that the measure improperly includes two measures, one which converts separate primary ballots into a single primary ballot, and the other that says only the top two vote-getters may appear on the November ballot.
In rebuttal, so far, the state argues that the measure has more than 100 words in its title only if code sections that are being amended are counted as words, and the state says code sections should not be counted as words. Also the state says both parts of the ballot measure are related to each other. These arguments will be fleshed out in the briefs that will be filed in January.
Norway held a parliamentary election on September 9, 2013. The election provided for a pilot project, in which 250,159 voters in twelve municipalities were able to vote on the internet. The OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), the outgrowth of the Helsinki Accords, analyzes the entire Norwegian election in this 19-page report. For the analysis of the internet voting experiment, see pages 9-10.
The entire report is interesting. Norway uses proportional representation and that is described also. Norway uses electronic poll-books, so that voters can vote in any precinct. Individuals need not register to vote; the government prepares a list of all registered voters using data already available. Voters can vote as many times as they wish, but only their last vote counts. This reduces the fear that someone else is watching the voter cast a vote, perhaps because the other individual is attempting to bribe the voter. If the voter does feel intimidated, the voter is free to cast another ballot later, eliminating the first ballot. Thanks to Bill Kelleher for the link.
According to this article, U.S. Senator Rand Paul, whose term expires in 2016, will try to change a Kentucky law that says a candidate cannot appear on the ballot as a candidate for more than one office.
The article says that some of Paul’s allies believe that the Kentucky law is unconstitutional, and they base this on the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, which struck down state laws that imposed term limits in congressional elections. However, courts have generally upheld “resign to run” laws, even when the plaintiff who challenged such laws wanted to run for federal office. Courts have ruled that if someone is unwilling to give up his or her old office in the middle of the term, in order to run for Congress, Article One is irrelevant. They say that it is the candidate’s own decision whether or not to run for Congress (and sacrifice the elected position already held). The state law is not prohibiting someone from running for Congress.
By analogy, then, if Paul challenged Kentucky’s law against running for two offices simultaneously, the courts would probably say that he is free to run for re-election to the Senate, so Article One has no bearing. The Kentucky primary is in May, and candidates file for a place on the primary ballot in January. Paul could file for the U.S. Senate and skip running in Kentucky’s presidential primary, and yet run in presidential primaries in other states.
