Maine LD 1879 has not made enough progress in the legislature by certain deadlines, and as a result, cannot pass this year. This is the bill to require unqualified parties that are trying to qualify to report their contributors and expenditures.

In other Maine legislative news, on March 29, Governor Paul LePage signed LD 1774, which conforms the Maine public funding law for candidates for state office to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits extra public funding for certain candidates who have well-funded opponents.

On March 2, four Indiana officials in St. Joseph County were indicted for facilitating forged petitions in the 2008 presidential primary. One of the officials was Democratic County Chair in that important county (which includes South Bend). The other three were employees of the county voter registration office. They are charged with helping Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get on the Democratic presidential primary ballot, by forging names of voters on the petitions.

Indiana requires 4,500 signatures for candidates in statewide major party primaries for ballot access, and 34,195 signatures for statewide independent candidates and the nominees of newly-qualifying parties. Any registered voter can sign any petition. This incident is one more piece of evidence that petition requirements as low as 4,500 can sometimes be formidable obstacles to ballot access. See this story. Thanks to Ryan Nees for the link.

On April 3, the District of Columbia holds presidential primaries for the Republican, Democratic, and Statehood Green Parties. The only name on the Green Party presidential primary is Jill Stein. However, Roseanne Barr is conducting a write-in campaign. The Green Party has 4,121 registered members in D.C. According to this story, the Barr campaign is using robocalls to ask Green Party registrants to cast a write-in vote for Barr. D.C. has closed presidential primaries.

It is ironic that the D.C. Board of Elections counts write-ins in presidential primaries, but won’t do so for declared write-in candidates for President in the general election. The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. circuit, will rule soon on whether the D.C. policy of refusing to count write-ins for President for declared presidential write-in candidates in November violates the U.S. Constitution.