On November 6, Ohio Governor John R. Kasich signed SB 193, only minutes after the Ohio legislature passed the bill. See this story.
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On November 5, San Bernardino, California, voters recalled three public officials, including city councilwoman Wendy McCammack. Yet in the same election, to fill the vacant Mayor’s seat, she placed first. There will be a run-off in February 2014 because she didn’t get a majority. See this story.
Late in the day on November 6, both houses of the Ohio legislature passed SB 193, the bill to re-define “political party”. The final version, as ironed out in a conference committee, is far worse than the version of the bill that the House had passed last week.
The new petition for elections beyond 2014 is the same petition requirement that exists in the current statutory law, 1% of the previous vote. The new vote test for elections beyond 2014 is 3% of the vote for the office at the top of the ticket (president in presidential years, governor in midterm years). However, when the vote test is met, the party gets the next two elections, not just the next election.
For 2014 only, the petition is one-half of 1% of the 2012 presidential vote, so approximately 28,000 signatures will be needed for 2014. The petition is due in early July.
A new hurdle, which didn’t exist in the old law, is that the party petition needs 500 signatures from each of half the U.S. House districts.
The House version required 10,000 signatures for 2014, and one-half of 1% for elections beyond that. The House version set the vote test at 2% for all future elections, not just 2014.
The bill does not say that the 2010 election returns should not be used to determine qualified status. The legislature seems to feel that the fact that the Libertarian Party got 2.4% for Governor in 2010 does not put the party on the ballot automatically for 2014. But precedents from ten other states suggest that the bill does do that, because the bill does not say the 2010 race doesn’t count. Whether the Libertarian Party is already on the ballot for 2014 will probably be the subject of a lawsuit, assuming the Governor signs the bill. UPDATE: the bill says the vote test in 2010 is 3%, so there can be no argument that the Libertarians are on the 2014 ballot automatically.
The bill only received 51 votes in the House, the bare minimum needed for passage. See this story.
On November 5, Seattle held non-partisan elections for city council. All seats are at-large, and candidates file for particular numbered seats. In seat two, Kshama Sawant polled 49,363 votes in unofficial returns. Her only opponent, Democratic incumbent Richard Conlin, polled 55,543. These are not final returns, although it is not likely the final returns will produce a very different outcome. Sawant is a professor who represents Socialist Alternative. See this story about the race, which was written before many votes had been counted.
Normally, jurisdictions that put straight-ticket devices on general election ballots never give independent candidates a straight-ticket device. But, at the November 5, 2013 election, Luzerne County (Pennsylvania) did give independent candidates a straight-ticket device. There were only three independent candidates for any office anywhere in the county. As a result, one independent candidate, Rick Williams, appears to have been elected to the Luzerne County Council, and chances are high he would not have been elected if the device hadn’t existed. See this story.
Election returns show that 5,956 voters used the straight-ticket device for the Democratic Party; 3,861 used the Republican device; and 758 used the independent device. The normal rationale for putting a straight-ticket device on the ballot does not really apply to independent candidates, because almost by definition of “independent”, independent candidates are likely to have any political views and may have nothing in common with each other.