On December 20, the Florida Secretary of State disqualified the Socialist Workers Party, on the grounds that it has not complied with the 2011 law that required all parties to re-qualify. The new law required all parties to again submit a list of party officers, and to furnish certain other information about the party rules. Also, the new rules said that each party must have at least three officers, and that they all must be registered members of that party. The Socialist Workers Party was disqualified for not having submitted a new application.

As the Secretary of State’s letter points out, the party, or any party, is free to re-qualify at any time.

Alabama State Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) has introduced two bills to improve ballot access for minor parties and independent candidates. SB 15 would reduce petitions for a previously unqualified party from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote to 5,000 signatures, for statewide status. A party that wished to qualify in only part of the state would need a petition of 1.5% of the last gubernatorial vote in that particular district. SB 15 also reduces the number of signatures for non-presidential independent candidates from 3% to 1.5% (the independent presidential petition is already 5,000 signatures, and the bill would not change that).

SB 55 would eliminate all mandatory ballot access petitions, if the previously unqualified party or independent candidate paid a filing fee. The fee would be 2% of the office’s annual salary. The fee for presidential candidates would be capped at $5,000. Thanks to Joshua Cassity for this news.

Congressional Quarterly has just published “America Votes 2010”, a 465-page book of election returns from each state for Congress and Governor. The book is the 29th in the series. A similar book is published every two years. The author, as in recent past years, is Rhodes Cook.

America Votes 2010 is the only reference book published so far that includes the Pennsylvania write-ins from November 2010. Pennsylvania permits write-in votes, but some counties of Pennsylvania fail to count any, and the state is very reluctant to include the write-ins in its official returns. Pennsylvania’s Department of State didn’t canvass them for four months after the election, and as a result, the other publications that include official election returns failed to mention any write-in votes. Other organizations that publish official election returns are the Federal Election Commission and the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Even America Votes doesn’t say who received the Pennsylvania write-ins. One reason Pennsylvania has so much trouble with write-ins is that it is the only large state that has no procedure by which a write-in candidate can file a declaration of candidacy. Therefore, the law requires Pennsylvania election officials to count and canvass all write-ins, even the silly ones. So, the result is that frequently, there is no canvassing of any write-ins at all. The minor parties that were left off the ballot in 2010 complained about this, but the federal courts said they didn’t have standing to complain about the policy, which was an absurd conclusion.