The New York Times has this story about the low turnout in the Los Angeles city election of March 5. One of the two mayoral candidates in the run-off, Wendy Greuel, says she favors moving Los Angeles elections for city office to November of presidential election years. She doesn’t say whether she favors ranked-choice voting; the only alternative would seem to be a run-off in December of presidential years, or January of the following year.
This article, despite its unfortunate title, rebuts the conventional wisdom that independent or minor party candidates are “spoilers”. The article discusses the possible Bill Bolling independent candidacy for Governor of Virginia, and makes it clear that just because Bolling was elected as the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor in 2009, that does not necessarily mean his entry into the race would damage the Republican nominee.
On March 7, a voter in Sandoval County, New Mexico, and three Republican candidates, filed a lawsuit to overturn the November 2012 election in the county for State Senate district 9, County Clerk, and County Probate Judge. All three elections had been very close in November. The basis for asking for a new election is that county election officials eliminated all 47 precincts in the Republican-leaning city of Rio Rancho, and substituted only five places in which to vote on election day. Furthermore, each of the five polling locations depended on printing ballots-on-demand, and each polling location only had three printers. Rio Rancho is the fastest-growing city in New Mexico and had 57,946 registered voters. The election was administered by the County Clerk, who is a Democrat.
As a result, some voters had to wait in line as long as 5 hours. The lead plaintiff, Teresa Fleming, has medical problems which made it impossible for her to stand in line that long, and she and many other voters abandoned the line and did not vote.
The Republican candidate for State Senate lost the election by 147 votes. The complaint uses statistical data to show that he would have won if the turnout in Rio Rancho had matched the turnout in the rural parts of the county. The rural parts of the county did not have their precincts abolished. The plaintiffs had originally asked for a recount, and then when that did not change the results had filed in state court, but withdrew their lawsuit in state court and re-filed in federal court. The case is Fleming v Gutierrez, 1:13cv-222. Although the Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson have nothing to do with this lawsuit, Sandoval County was one of Gary Johnson’s best counties in the nation; he polled 4.04% in the county and his vote total would surely have been higher if election administration in Rio Rancho had been better. Rio Rancho is a northern suburb of Albuquerque.
On March 7, U.S. District Court Judge Lawerence Stengel, a Bush Jr. appointee, ruled that neither the Constitution Party, the Green Party, nor the Libertarian Party, has standing to challenge the unique Pennsylvania system that puts petitioning groups at risks of paying as much as $100,000 if they submit a petition that is determined to be invalid. Here is the 17-page opinion in Constitution Party v Aichele, eastern district, cv-12-2726.
The decision says nothing about the merits of the issue. It says the Green Party doesn’t have standing because its statewide 2012 petition was not challenged. It says the Libertarian Party doesn’t have standing because even though its statewide petition was challenged, after two months of grueling petition-checking, the party showed it did have enough valid signatures. And it says the Constitution Party doesn’t have standing because it voluntarily withdrew its 2012 statewide petition. Of course the reason the Constitution Party withdrew its petition was that it was afraid if the petition didn’t have enough valid signatures, the party would face ruinous costs.
The decision does not cite one ballot access precedent, except for Judge Stengel’s own precedent from a similar case filed on the same issue in a non-election year (he also said in that case that standing is lacking). The U.S. Supreme Court precedents on standing in ballot access cases make it abundantly clear that Judge Stengel is wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court has even struck down ballot access laws (or remanded the case back to a lower court) when the plaintiffs didn’t try to get on the ballot. This is true in the case of the Socialist Labor Party in Ohio in 1968, Gus Hall in California in 1972, and Eugene McCarthy in Texas in 1976. Also, in 1977 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a decision of a 3-judge court in Arkansas, striking down the April petition deadline, even though the plaintiff in that case hadn’t circulated a petition when he won the deadline case. If parties and candidates that didn’t even try to get on the ballot have standing, it is obvious that the Constitution Party has standing, because it did try.
Ironically, there is some reason to believe that if the Constitution Party had not withdrawn its petition, the petition would have been held valid, because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in September and October 2012 that signatures are valid if the signer had moved (within the county) and had not updated the voter registration record; and also that signatures are valid even if the signer forgot or didn’t know to show the year in the date column. But those decisions came after the party had already withdrawn the petition. The plaintiffs will appeal.
The Republican, the daily newspaper of Springfield, Massachusetts, has this interesting story about Americans Elect and Dan Winslow. Winslow is a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination in the upcoming special election. In 2010 and 2011 he was the chief ballot access attorney for Americans Elect. He is also a Massachusetts state legislator who has introduced two bills to improve ballot access.
