On May 14, Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) introduced HJR 44, a proposed Constitutional Amendment putting the right to vote into the Constitution. As of August 26, it only has 18 co-sponsors. Ten signed up in May, one in June, five in July, and only two in August. See here for the list of co-sponsors. The U.S. House has 435 members from states and also six non-voting members from other jurisdictions.
On August 26, the California Assembly passed SB 213, which removes all residency requirements for petitioners of all types of petition. The bill now goes to the Governor.
Also on August 26, the California Senate unanimously passed AB 1419, which moves the deadline for a newly-qualifying party in presidential election years from January to July. The bill must return to the Assembly because the bill was amended after it passed the Assembly the first time. The amendment is not substantive and relates to which government must pay the extra costs associated with the bill.
Earlier this year, the We the People Project was established by Neal Weare and others, to advance voting rights and other basic constitutional rights for Americans who live in the overseas territories and the District of Columbia. The web page is www.equalrightsnow.org.
The Project is helping to represent several U.S. nationals who were born in American Samoa. They filed a lawsuit last year arguing that the U.S. Constitution guarantees that they be considered citizens. One of the plaintiffs, a Vietnam War Vet, now lives in the continental U.S. and cannot vote, because persons born in American Samoa are considered to be U.S. “Nationals”, not “citizens.” Residents of American Samoa do use U.S. passports.
On June 26, 2013, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., upheld the government’s position, which is that the Constitution does not guarantee citizenship to persons born in unorganized territories. The decision relies on a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1901. The case is Tuaua v U.S.A., and will soon be in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. Over the years, Congress has enacted laws saying that persons born in the other overseas territories are U.S. citizens, but Congress has never extended that to residents of American Samoa. American Samoa elects a Delegate to the U.S. House, and he has intervened in the case on the side of the federal government and against the plaintiffs. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on October 8 in McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission. Here is the reply brief of the Republican National Committee, and here is Shaun McCutcheon’s reply brief. These are the last briefs. The issue is federal limits on the amount of total contributions that an individual may make, to all candidates and committees combined.
A Kentucky Libertarian, David Patterson, has announced his intention to win the party’s U.S. Senate nomination for 2014 and to appear on the ballot. If he gets the required 5,000 signatures, he will be the first minor party or independent candidate to have petitioned onto the statewide Kentucky ballot in a midterm congressional year since 1978. The American Party had petitioned in 1978 for a U.S. Senate candidate.
Kentucky requires a party to receive 2% for President, to obtain qualified status. The only minor parties that have met this threshold in Kentucky in the last 80 years are the American Party 1968-1972, the Anderson Coalition Party 1980-1984, and the Reform Party 1996-2000. Because the qualification standard is rather difficult in practice, most of the time there are no qualified minor parties in Kentucky; and as a result, few minor party candidates, especially in midterm years.
The Kentucky Libertarian Party has only twice had a candidate for U.S. Senate on the ballot. Those two instances were in 1992 and 1996, and both times, the candidate’s name was listed on the same petition as the party’s presidential candidate, so there was no extra petitioning work in those years.
