Three candidates have paid the $2,500 filing fee to appear on the Texas Democratic presidential primary. Besides President Obama, they are Darcy Richardson of Florida, and Bob Ely of Illinois.
The web page for Richardson is darcy2012.com. The web page for Ely is workmorekeepless.com.
It is possible others will qualify, because the deadline is not until Monday, December 19. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.
On December 14, a single justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court referred the lawsuit Libertarian Association of Massachusetts v Galvin to the full State Supreme Court. The referral was made by Justice Robert Cordy. This makes it very likely that the full court will hear and decide the case.
The case originated in 2008, when the Libertarian Party submitted a petition to be on the November ballot for President, using a stand-in presidential candidate on the petition. The party used a stand-in because it wanted to start circulating its petition before the national convention had chosen the actual presidential nominee. Massachusetts had permitted stand-ins in the past, and in 2007 had even told the party that it would furnish the forms necessary to do this. But then, when the party submitted its petition and tried to replace the stand-in with the actual nominee, the state refused. The party then won in U.S. District Court. But, after the election was over, the First Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court’s decision on constitutionality. But, the First Circuit said perhaps the state courts would construe the Massachusetts law to allow presidential stand-ins.
The first step toward getting a state court to construe the law has now been achieved. If the Libertarian Party wins the case, it will help not only that party, but all unqualified parties which want to begin petitioning before they have nominated their presidential nominee. For example, a victory would help Americans Elect.
On December 15, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the state’s petition challenge system, at least as applied to the recall petition currently circulating against him, violates the U.S. Constitution. The recall petition needs 540,208 signatures, but not all signers must be registered voters. They must be eligible to register to vote.
The lawsuit says that many individuals are signing the petition twice, and because the state elections officials don’t plan to weed out duplicate signatures, the burden is on the Governor and his supporters to find the duplicate signatures and challenge them. The lawsuit also points out that the Governor and his supporters would only have ten days to do this work, and that the burden violates due process. Here is the 8-page complaint. The case is Friends of Scott Walker, and Scott Walker, v Wisconsin Government Accountability Board. It is filed in state circuit court in Waukesha County, no. 11-cv-04195.
On December 15, Americans Elect physically filed approximately 32,000 signatures with the Maine Secretary of State. These signatures have already been verified by various town clerks. The law requires 28,639 valid signatures, so the petition has enough valid signatures.
Maine’s petition requirement for newly qualifying parties is among the most difficult in the nation. The only registered voters who are eligible to sign are voters registered independent, plus the tiny number of votes who have already registered into the Americans Elect Party. This petition procedure has existed since 1976, and the only other group that ever successfully used it was the Reform Party in 1995.
Generally, groups become qualified parties in Maine, not with the petition, but by placing a presidential or a gubernatorial candidate on the ballot, with the party label, and hoping that candidate polls at least 5%. Groups that have used the independent petition/5% method to obtain qualified party status in Maine in the last forty years include the Libertarian Party 1992-1994, and the Green Party, which has been ballot-qualified for over ten years.
Americans Elect is still required to hold at least one town caucus meeting in March 2012, in at least 14 of the state’s 16 counties. Then it will be entitled to its own primary, and anyone can run for any partisan office in the party’s primary. However, it will be very difficult for anyone to get on the party’s primary ballot unless a substantial number of voters register as members of the party.
Paul Mitchell has this insightful column in Capitol Weekly, a Sacramento, California politics periodical. The Mitchell column analyzes how Proposition 14 is going to work, with an emphasis on the stark difference between its effects on Democrats, versus Republicans.
