Donald A. Bailey, a member of Congress from Pennsylvania between 1978 and 1982, and Pennsylvania’s Auditor between 1984 and 1988, will run for Pennsylvania Attorney General this year as an independent, according to this story. He has been a Democrat, but presumably is now registered as an independent. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The 2004 campaign season was almost eight years ago, and yet three courts are still pondering how to rule on various Ralph Nader lawsuits stemming from the 2004 election. As readers know, the Democratic National Committee and its allies spent millions of dollars, actively trying to block Ralph Nader from the ballot in as many states as possible.
The Democratic National Committee never reported these expenses to the Federal Election Commission. Nader sued the FEC in U.S. District Court in Washington for failing to investigate this reporting lapse. The District Court ruled in November 2011 that the FEC’s failure to follow its own rules in this matter was “harmless error”, and dismissed Nader’s lawsuit. Nader asked for a rehearing on December 9, 2011, and it is still pending. It is unusual for rehearing requests to remain pending for that length of time. Usually they are denied in less than a month, especially when the decision is before only a single judge.
Nader sued the Democratic National Committee, and the Maine Democratic Party, over its behavior in 2004. Several Nader lawsuits of this type were dismissed on the grounds that he had filed the lawsuits too late, but the Maine case does not have this problem, because Maine has a six year statute of limitations. The lower state court in Maine refused to permit a trial in the case, which is called Nader v The Maine Democratic Party. On September 14, 2011, Nader argued in the Maine Supreme Court that the lower court should have permitted a trial. It is now been almost six months and the Maine Supreme Court has not issued a decision.
The people who challenged Nader’s 2004 Pennsylvania petition have been trying for years to obtain money from one of Nader’s bank accounts in the District of Columbia. The Pennsylvania state courts had ruled that the challengers were entitled to over $80,000 from Nader, because the Pennsylvania courts had ruled Nader’s 2004 petition didn’t have enough valid signatures. One of Nader’s banks still hasn’t released the money to the challengers. On April 21,2010, the D.C. Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on whether the money should be released, and there is still no decision in that case, even though it has been almost two years since the oral argument. That case is Serody v Nader.
The Georgia Senate Ethics Committee will hear HB 899 on Tuesday, March 13, at 2 p.m. in Room 310 of the CL Office Building. This is the bill that has all the Secretary of State’s election law improvement ideas except for the ballot access improvements. Georgia activists plan to attend the hearing and ask the Committee members to restore the ballot access improvements that were deleted in the House.
The improvements were modest; they consisted of reducing the number of signatures by approximately 25% for minor party and independent candidates. For example, the U.S. House petition would go from approximately 18,000 signatures in the typical district, to approximately 14,000. Nevertheless, Georgia has maintained the 5% petition standard unchanged (for district office) ever since 1943, and any reduction at all would be historic.
On March 9, filing for the California primary closed (except in a few districts in which the incumbent is not running for re-election). It appears that there are only thirteen minor party candidates running for U.S. House of Representatives and state legislature. This is the lowest number of California minor party candidates for those offices since 1966, when there were no parties on the ballot in California except for the Democratic and Republican Parties, and thus no minor party candidates on the ballot.
In 2010, there were 74 minor party candidates on the California ballot for U.S. House and legislature.
In the U.S. Senate race, it appears that one Peace & Freedom Party member, and one Libertarian, and two American Independent Party members, filed. In 2010, there were six minor party candidates for U.S. Senate on the primary ballot, and four in the general election. Also in November 2010, the Socialist Workers Party had a declared write-in U.S. Senate candidate. Even write-in candidates in the general election are now barred.
Proposition 14, passed by the voters in June 2010, is responsible for this drop in candidacies. Proposition 14 makes it virtually impossible for minor party members to participate in the general election, so many candidates decided not to file. Furthermore, the implementing legislation for Proposition 14, SB 6, severely increased the number of signatures needed for a petition in lieu of the filing fee.
California always has 100 regularly-scheduled legislative elections, every two years, and in the last ten years, has had 53 U.S. House seats up every two years. It appears that for U.S. House and legislature combined, there are six Greens, five Libertarians, two Peace & Freedom Party members, and no American Independent Party members running. It is unlikely that any member of Americans Elect filed, but this can’t be known for sure until the Secretary of State releases the list of candidates. UPDATE: an earlier version of this post said there are four Peace & Freedom Party candidates for district office, but in fact there are only two. Therefore the total number of minor party members running for district office this year in California is thirteen, not fifteen.
On March 10, the Northern Mariana Islands chose delegates as a Republican caucus, and Mitt Romney won all nine spots. See this story. Thanks to Frontloading HQ for the results.
