On April 10, Americans Elect turned in its last batch of signatures in North Dakota, to obtain status as a political party. On April 11 the Libertarian Party turned in its signatures. Also on April 11, the Constitution Party turned in its signatures. North Dakota requires 7,000 signatures. Because there is no voter registration at all in North Dakota, there is no list of registered voters for the state to check the petition. Instead the state selects a few names from each petition and mails them a test piece of postal mail. Assuming the post office doesn’t return the state’s mailing as undeliverable, the signature is considered valid. Statistical sampling is used for this process. Americans Elect submitted 9,600. The Libertarian Party submitted 8,000, and it is thought that the Constitution Party also submitted 8,000.

The North Dakota Secretary of State has given permission to Americans Elect to avoid a government primary. Therefore, at the June 12 open primary, the primary ballots will probably list candidates of the Republican, Democratic, Constitution, and Libertarian Parties. Each party has its own primary party column. The voter decides in the secrecy of the voting booth, which party’s primary ballot to use. Americans Elect will not be printed on the primary ballot because it doesn’t desire to run candidates for any office in 2012 other than President and Vice-President. Americans Elect will be the first ballot-qualified party in North Dakota since the primary was instituted in 1905, to not participate in the primary.

Parties that are not ballot-qualified in North Dakota may still place their presidential nominee on the November ballot, with the party label, if they submit 4,000 signatures by early September.

The Rhode Island House will vote on HB 7388 on May 1. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. It is likely to pass, because the House has 75 members and 45 of them are co-sponsors of the bill.

The Rhode Island legislature passed the same bill in 2008, but the Governor, Republican Donald Carcieri, vetoed it. Carcieri is no longer Governor. The current Governor is Lincoln Chafee, an independent.

On April 10, the South Dakota Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in state court to place two of its members on the June 5 Democratic primary ballot. See this story. The two candidates, both seeking legislative seats, had miniscule errors in their petitions. The two candidates are unopposed, so if they win the lawsuit, it doesn’t matter that they may not have won in time to appear on the primary ballot. They would be considered nominated, because South Dakota doesn’t permit write-in votes, so if they had qualified, they could not have been defeated. The case is South Dakota Democratic Party v Gant, 6th state circuit court, 12-148.