Merlin Miller, presidential nominee of American Third Position, met with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, last week. See this story, which says the two men spent twenty minutes together. Miller was in Iran for a film festival. He was interviewed for 12 minutes on PressTV, Iran’s government-owned international news network. Thanks to one of my commenters for the link.
South Dakota Representative Brian Gosch faces a possibility of being removed from the November ballot. He is running for re-election in the 32nd district. If he is removed, voters will have no choice to make. The district elects two representatives, and there are only three candidates, two Republicans and one Democrat. If Gosch, one of the Republicans, is removed, there will be only two candidates left on the ballot and voters choose two. South Dakota is one of five states that bans all write-in votes in all elections.
Gosch notarized his own petitions when he sought a place on the Republican primary ballot earlier this year. South Dakota law does not permit a notary public to notarize a document for himself or herself. Gosch said, technically, he was notarizing the petition on behalf of the individual who circulated the petition, and not notarizing it for himself, and the Secretary of State therefore accepted the filing. Gosch then won the Republican nomination. However, another South Dakota Republican, Stephanie Strong, then sued the Secretary of State. On September 14, a Circuit Court Judge in Pennington County ordered the Secretary of State to either remove Gosch from the ballot, or appear at a court hearing on October 3 to explain why he didn’t do that. See this story.
Strong brought the lawsuit after her own petition to get on this year’s Republican primary ballot was rejected by the Secretary of State. She was running for U.S. House and needed 1,955 valid signatures. She submitted 2,018 signatures but the Secretary of State determined some of her petitions were invalid.
On Monday, September 17, new briefs were filed in Republican Party of Connecticut v Merrill, the case over which party should be listed first on the ballot. See this story. It seems somewhat likely that a decision will be released by the Connecticut Supreme Court today.
On September 19, the California Poll released the results of its recent presidential poll. The results are: President Obama 58%, Mitt Romney 34%, other 2%, undecided 6%.
The pollster read this question to respondents: “If the presidential election were being held today would you vote for the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden or the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?” This wording, of course, suggests that they are the only candidates. The “other” percentage might have been higher if the poll question had been different. To see the poll wording, scroll down to the bottom of the report.
The poll also suggests that independent voters are far more likely to have responded “other” than any other type of voters. Only 3% of registered Democrats are supporting “other” or are undecided; only 8% of registered Republicans are in those category; but 16% of the voters registered outside the two major parties chose one of those two categories.
The New York Times story has this story about the difficult-to-read ballots used earlier this month in the primary. There are many huge deficiencies with the design of New York state ballots, but this story only covers the tiny print size used to print the names of candidates. Problems not mentioned in the article are features that deprive some political parties of their own party column, and instead squeeze two parties into the same column, even when there is lots of room to avoid doing that. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
