The Alabama Senate Rules Committee has sent SB 15 to the Senate floor, for a vote on Tuesday, April 3. This is the bill that reduces the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from over 44,000 signatures, to 5,000 signatures. Thanks to Don Webb for this news.
On March 27, the North Carolina Constitution Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against North Carolina’s May petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. The case is North Carolina Constitution Party v Bartlett. It is expected that the North Carolina Green Party will soon join the case.
In 1988, North Carolina’s Board of Elections was so sure that the May petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties is unconstitutional, that it waived the deadline and allowed the New Alliance Party to submit its petition in July.
States in which May and June petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties to submit their signatures have been held too early, or have been enjoined, are Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Also, in Populist Party v Herschler, a Wyoming case, the 10th circuit said that June is probably too early, but didn’t definitely decide the issue. States in which independent presidential petition deadlines in May and June have been struck down are Arizona, Kansas, and South Dakota. In some instances, the states agreed that their deadlines were too early and didn’t contest the lawsuit. North Carolina clearly has no state interest in requiring newly-qualifying parties to submit the petition in May, because in North Carolina, newly-qualifying parties do not nominate by primary, and the state lets independent candidates submit their petitions in June.
On March 27, the Missouri Supreme Court handed down an order, settling the boundaries of new State House of Representative districts. The order came down on the last day for candidates to file for the primary ballot, only a few hours before the filing deadline. The U.S. House districts are still not settled for sure. See this story.
Earlier this year, a bill in the legislature to postpone the primary filing deadline a month failed to make substantial headway, although technically it could still pass.
National Public Radio has this balanced article about how many independent voters there are in the U.S. The article is written by Scott Neuman. The article does not refer to voter registration data. Current data shows that 42.64% of the voters are registered Democrats, 30.79% are registered Republicans, 24.37% are registered “independent”, and 2.20% are registered in other parties.
On March 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Pennsylvania election officials, and Pennsylvania state courts, cannot enforce a state law that says petitioners cannot work outside their home districts. The case is In Re: The Nomination Petitions and Papers of Carl Stevenson, 54-MAP-2010. Here is the decision, by Chief Justice Ronald Castille.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not actually hold that the residency requirement for petitioners is unconstitutional. Instead, it says that because a U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania in 2002 enjoined the residency requirement for circulators for minor party and independent candidates, the law can’t be enforced. This might seem obvious, but in Pennsylvania, it isn’t obvious. There are two concurring opinions (here and here), both of which deal with procedure. The Supreme Court opinion does not say anything about precedents from other states on this issue that have been handed down in the last ten years.
Technically, the in-district residency requirement for petitioners seeking to put someone on a primary ballot is still in effect. If the legislature were responsible, it would now pass a bill repealing all in-district residency requirements, for both types of petition, primary and general. However, the Pennsylvania legislature is noted for almost never updating the election code. There are now seven Pennsylvania ballot access laws on the statutes that have been held unconstitutional, but never repealed. The worst example is that in 1984, two U.S. District Courts in Pennsylvania (the eastern district and the middle district) struck down the petition deadline for minor party and independent candidate petitions, but the legislature has never changed the election code to reflect that.
