On January 13, Montana asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore the state law that makes it a crime for a political party to support, endorse, or oppose a candidate in state judicial elections. See this story. The case is Fox v Sanders County Republican Central Committee. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.
Last year, the Tennessee Senate passed a resolution setting up a committee to study ballot access for new and small political parties. The committee, which includes represents of the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties, finally had its first meeting, on December 13. However, according to this news story, the Senators were not willing to lower the number of signatures needed for statewide party status. The article appears to suggest that the Senators do favor a procedure by which a party that is not on the statewide ballot can still get on in particular congressional and legislative districts.
The Tennessee legislature convenes on January 14.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican member of the Federal Election Commission, has this article on the Heritage Foundation’s web page, about fraudulent ballot access petitions in the Indiana presidential primary in 2008. Both candidates who petitioned in the Democratic race qualified for the ballot, and the fraud was not discovered until years after that primary.
Von Spakovsky implies that only the Barack Obama petitions contained forgeries, but actually, both petitioning candidates in that Democratic primary submitted petitions that contained forgeries. Hillary Clinton was the only other candidate who petitioned. Indiana requires 4,500 signatures for anyone to get on a presidential primary ballot.
The article then mentions the 2012 Republican presidential primary in Virginia, when four petitions failed to gather enough signatures, and the Republican primary only included Mitt Romney and Ron Paul
Von Spakovsky concludes that because petition fraud exists, therefore voter fraud in general exists. Von Spakovsky is an ardent support of government photo-ID for voters at the polls. But the point that most people would make, concerning the Indiana and Virginia petition failures and problems, is that the presidential primary ballot access requirements in both states are too difficult. If even candidates such as Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton have trouble with such petitions, the ballot access laws should be relaxed. And, in fact, in 2013 the Virginia legislature did cut the number of signatures in half for presidential primary petitions, from 10,000 to 5,000 signatures.
Twenty-two Virginia legislators are jointly sponsoring a bill that would eliminate the ability of parties to nominate by convention. Currently, Virginia is the only state in which major parties ever use a nomination process for Congress and state legislative office that does not involve a primary.
The bill is SB 507, sponsored by five Republican State Senators, four Democratic State Senators, ten Republican Delegates, and three Democratic Delegates. The bill doesn’t say that conventions can’t be used; it just says that conventions can’t be used if there are any overseas military voters who won’t be able to participate if a convention is used.
An identical bill in the lower chamber is HB 194.
On January 9, Alabama State Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) reintroduced the same ballot access bill he had introduced in 2013. This year, the bill is SB 70. It lowers the number of signatures for newly-qualifying parties and non-presidential independent candidates from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5% of the last gubernatorial vote. It also eases the petition deadline for newly qualifying parties, from primary day, to three weeks after the run-off primary. In a presidential election year, when the first primary is in March, that would put the deadline in early May. In a midterm year, the deadline would be in early August.
