Ballot Access News

On November 19, Citizens Action filed a lawsuit in the West Virginia Supreme Court, hoping to get a ruling that the state must hold a special gubernatorial election in the first half of 2011.  Joe Manchin resigned from being Governor recently because he had been elected in the middle of his 4-year term to the U.S. Senate.  The State Constitution requires a special election when the governorship becomes empty when there is at least one year to go in the term.  But it doesn’t say when the special election should be.  See this story.

Although the story mentions that the Republican Party backs this lawsuit, Citizens Action is more closely associated with the Mountain Party than it is with conservative groups.  If there is no special election, the President of the State Senate will serve as acting Governor until the end of 2012.

Alaska registration forms list not only the qualified parties, but also parties that have filed a request to be listed on the form so that they may possibly get enough registered members to become ballot-qualified.  The Constitution Party recently filed the paperwork to be listed on Alaska registration forms.

The only ballot-qualified parties in Alaska currently, besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, are the Libertarian and Alaskan Independence Parties.  Thanks to ThirdPartyDaily for this news.  Other unqualified parties now listed on the Alaska registration form are the Green, Veterans, and Republican Moderate Parties.  None of those last-named three parties seem to be active in Alaska anymore, and their registration numbers have been slowly declining for the last six years.

The Hartford Courant has this story about Connecticut’s decentralized election system, in which the Secretary of State has no power over the administration of federal and state elections, relative to the town clerks.  As the story says, this is the standard method used throughout New England.  That is why New England states require candidates for statewide office to submit signatures collected in each town, directly to that town.  In most New England states the candidate or party must then collect those local signatures, after they have been checked, and transport them to the Secretary of State.  Ballot access in New England is considerably more difficult than it is in most parts of the nation, partly for this reason.