Rhodes Cook has this lengthy analysis, pointing out that it is not too late for a new Republican presidential candidate to emerge. Cook is well-positioned to write this article. He is the editor of The Rhodes Cook Letter, a quarterly publication that analyzes election returns, polling data, straw polls, for presidential, gubernatorial and congressional races. Also he is the author of America Votes, a massive book of election returns that appears every two years, and which has been coming out since 1956. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.

Law Professor Rick Hasen, whose blog is ElectionLawBlog.org, sometimes allows guest posters. Here is a link to a guest post by Professor Darry Sragow, which is fairly lengthy, and which defends Americans Elect against various criticisms made by Hasen himself, and others, of Americans Elect.

One minor criticism of the Sragow article is that implies that California requires 1,030,080 valid signatures to qualify a new party. The piece is referring to the California procedure that says if a new party wishes to qualify by petition, it needs the signatures of voters equal to 10% of the last gubernatorial vote. But California does not require new parties to qualify by petition; instead they may qualify if they persuade 103,008 voters to fill out voter registration cards, listing themselves as members of the new group. Both choices are far too difficult, but it is not strictly accurate to say that California requires over 1,000,000 signatures. If the only method for a new party to get on the California ballot were a petition of 10%, then the California law would be unconstitutional. All mandatory ballot access requirements for new parties, and for independent candidates, in excess of 5% of the number of registered voters, have long ago been held unconstitutional. Such cases have been won in Arkansas, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio.