On July 5, a U.S. District Court in Georgia ordered the state to accept late-arriving ballots from overseas absentee ballots. See this story.
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On July 5, the Arizona deadline for submitting initiative petitions, proponents of the top-two open primary filed 365,486 signatures. The requirement is 259,213 signatures. The measure will have enough valid signatures if 71% or more of the signatures are valid.
On July 5, Wayne Stenehjem ruled that Roland Riemers may not appear on the November ballot as the Libertarian Party nominee for Governor, even though he was nominated at the party’s primary last month. North Dakota elects Governors and Lieutenant Governors jointly in November. Voters see a ticket, consisting of a candidate for Governor and for Lieutenant Governor, and voters only vote for tickets for those offices. However, in the primary, candidates for those offices run separately.
Here is the ruling. It says because no Libertarian was nominated at the party’s primary for Lieutenant Governor, the gubernatorial candidacy is not allowed. The Libertarian Party had a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, but because of a flaw in his candidacy papers, he did not appear on the primary ballot.
The ruling takes no notice that in certain other states that elect Governors and Lieutenant Governors jointly in November, but separately in the primary, parties have been permitted to run a candidate for one office without the other one. Such instances occurred in Wisconsin in 2010, and in Illinois in 1986.
As a result of this ruling, the Libertarian Party will be removed from the ballot after November 2012 unless Gary Johnson receives at least 5% of the vote. The vote test, in presidential years, applies to the presidential nominee and alternatively applies to the Gubernatorial nominee. If either gets 5%, the party remains on the ballot.
Krist Novoselic, chair of FairVote, will be on the Rachel Maddow show Thursday evening, July 5, to talk about Proportional Representation and other election reforms that are widely used throughout the world but which are still little-known in the United States. The show airs at 9:30 p.m. east coast time. Thanks to Rob Richie for this news.
Louisiana defines “political party” as a group that obtains at least 1,000 registered voters. At the point at which a group attains that many registrations, it then must also pay a fee of $1,000. It is then a qualified party, and retains that status as long as it runs one candidate (for office other than president) during any four-year period. It is irrelevant if its registration then declines to below 1,000.
Americans Elect had been working to increase its registration in Louisiana, earlier this year, before it dropped out of the 2012 presidential race. As of the June 1 tally it had 803 registrants.
Even though Americans Elect stopped all its ballot access petitioning around the nation in May, the July 1 Louisiana registration tally shows an increase to 829 registrations. It is possible that some individuals not connected with the Americans Elect office in Washington, D.C., are working on completing the drive. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the news about the new tally.