One Pennsylvania Democrat Challenges Petitions of One of his Competitors

Posted on by March 17, 2014
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Five Pennsylvania Democrats have filed to be on the Democratic primary ballot for Lieutenant Governor. The primary is May 20. One of the Democrats has challenged the petition of one of the other candidates. See this story. Pennsylvania requires 1,000 valid signatures for that office, with at least 100 from each of five counties.

Pennsylvania is the only state that still has county distribution requirements for statewide candidates, and the distribution requirement only applies to primary petitions for state office, not federal office. County distribution requirements for statewide candidate petitions in all other states have long ago been declared unconstitutional or been repealed. The most important precedent is from the U.S. Supreme Court and is Moore v Ogilvie, issued in 1969.

U.S. District Court Judge Expedites Arizona Green Party Ballot Access Case

Posted on by March 17, 2014
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On March 14, a U.S. District Court Judge in Arizona set an expedited briefing schedule in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 2:14cv-375. This is the case that challenges the February petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. Each party will submit its chief brief by April 11, and any responses to those briefs are due April 24.

New Arizona Registration Data

Posted on by March 17, 2014
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On March 17, the Arizona Secretary of State released a new voter registration tally, as of March 1: Republican 1,130,170; Democratic 960,701; Libertarian 26,595; Americans Elect 332; independents and others 1,134,243. The state no longer tallies the number of Greens separately, but the last time the state did a separate Green tally, in November 2013, there were 5,601 Greens. If the Green Party gets on the 2014 ballot, the state will resume its Green Party tally.

The January 1, 2014 figures were: Republican 1,131,263; Democratic 962,828; Libertarian 26,387; Americans Elect 317; independents and others, 1,123,998.

Some news stories have reported that for the first time, there are more independents than Republicans, but when one considers that the state doesn’t separate out the independents from the members of unqualified parties, especially the Greens, that is not true yet, although the trend shows it soon will be true.

Alabama Files Brief in Eleventh Circuit in Minor Party Challenge to March Petition Deadline

Posted on by March 17, 2014
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On March 17, attorneys for Alabama filed this 70-page brief with the Eleventh Circuit in Stein v Secretary of State of Alabama, 13-15556. The brief discusses the state interest in the March deadline starting on page 58. The state says it wouldn’t be fair to the two major parties if newly-qualifying parties could file their petitions after the March primary. Also the state says that the number of signatures is so large, that if the state had a later deadline, it would have trouble verifying all the signatures.

The obvious response is that if the state didn’t require 44,829 valid signatures, the burden on the state from checking the signatures would not be great. Alabama lets independent presidential candidates on the ballot if they file a petition by late summer, containing 5,000 signatures. In 2012, only three such petitions were received, from Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Virgil Goode. It is logical to assume, then, that if the state only required 5,000 signtures for newly-qualifying parties, only the three parties that successfully petitioned for their presidential candidates would have submitted statewide petitions. So the state would not have needed to check any independent presidential petitions, and the burden of checking three party petitions would have been no greater than the burden the state actually experienced.