On February 27, the Wyoming Secretary of State determined that Americans Elect has enough valid signatures on its petition. Wyoming now has four ballot-qualified parties: Americans Elect, Democratic, Libertarian, and Republican. The Constitution Party and the Country Party are expected to qualify soon. Assuming that happens, Wyoming will have six ballot qualified-parties, the most in its history.
On February 27, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said he won’t challenge the validity of the recall petition filed to remove him from office. See this story. In Wisconsin, signatures are valid if the voter is eligible to register to vote. There is no master list to check the validity of signatures. The only signatures that the Governor might have been able to invalidate would have been duplicate signatures, and names on the petition in which the so-called signer doesn’t exist, or doesn’t live at the address listed on the petition. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Pennsylvania Politics has this interesting analysis of the upcoming petition challenge to Congressman Jason Altmire’s petitions to be on the Democratic primary ballot. The article discusses whether the Pennsylvania state courts will finally rule that in-district residency requirements for petitioners are unconstitutional, even in primary elections. Thanks to Larry Otter for the link.
On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Greene v Bartlett, 11-868, which challenged the number of signatures required for an independent candidate for U.S. House in North Carolina. The requirement is 4% of the number of registered voters. The law also requires a filing fee of 2% of the annual salary of the office. The requirement is generally between 16,000 and 20,000 signatures.
That law is so strict, no independent candidate for U.S. House has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot in North Carolina, and government-printed ballots have existed in that state since 1901. However, in 2010, the Service Employees International Union successfully completed the petition for a candidate who then refused to run, so the state seized on this incident as evidence that the requirement is not impossible to fulfill. No one has ever revealed how much that petition cost, but it was probably at least $50,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1974 in Storer v Brown, and again in 1977 in Mandel v Bradley, that ballot access laws that are so difficult, they are seldom used are probably too difficult and should be struck down. No one knows why the Court doesn’t take ballot cases in which the lower court disregards these precedents.
Political scientists Paul Herrnson, Michael Hamner, and Richard Niemi have published “The Impact of Ballot Type on Voter Errors”. See a description of the paper here. The paper concludes that voters make fewer errors in the absence of a straight-ticket device, and more errors when the straight-ticket device exists. The kind of errors measured are unintentional undervotes, and also voting for someone whom the voter did not wish to vote for. Thanks to Election Updates for the link.
