On December 20, Rhode Island elections officials announced that the Americans Elect petition for party status has enough valid signatures. The state said Americans Elect will be added to the voter registration forms within 90 days. Americans Elect is now entitled to its own primary in Rhode Island, and any registered voter who registers with the party can run for any partisan office in the party’s primary.
Politico reports here that Newt Gingrich said publicly that he is “scrambling” to finish his petition in Virginia to be on the Republican presidential primary ballot. Virginia requires 10,000 signatures for all presidential primary candidates, more than twice as many as any other state for mandatory presidential primary access. The deadline is December 22.
Earlier this year, a bill was introduced in the Virginia legislature by a Democrat to cut the requirement in half, but the bill did not pass the legislature. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
On December 19, the Madison County, Alabama Republican Party blocked Tom Butler from getting on the Republican primary ballot for Madison County Commissioner, second district. The reason for denying him ballot access is that in the past he was a Democrat. See this story.
Butler was endorsed by Alabama’s Republican Governor, Bob Riley. Alabama does not have registration by party. For 28 years Butler served in the State Senate as a Democrat, but he says he is a Republican now. But because he can’t run in the Republican primary, he may petition to get on the ballot as an independent candidate. In 2010, State Senator Harri Anne Smith was denied the opportunity to run for re-election to the State Senate as a Republican, because she had endorsed a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2008. She then ran as an independent for re-election, and was won.
All the briefs have now been filed in Green Party of Tennessee et al v Hargett, U.S. District Court, middle district, 3:11-cv-692. The issue is the new ballot access law for minor parties passed by the 2011 session of the legislature. The old law had been declared unconstitutional in 2010. It provided for a petition of 40,042 valid signatures, due in late March. The new law keeps the same number of signatures and moves the deadline to early April. The new lawsuit argues that the new law is just as unconstitutional as the old law.
Here is the state’s brief, which assumes that Tennessee has no policy option except to provide that all parties, even newly-qualifying parties, nominate by primary. The state says the deadline can’t be later than April because the state must provide for primaries for new parties. The state’s brief says that primaries have been mandatory for parties since 1909. What the state’s brief does not say is that the 1909 law, requiring primaries, only applied to parties that had polled 10% of the vote in the last election. Between 1909 and 1972, Tennessee let newly-qualifying parties, and small older parties, continue to nominate by convention. The plaintiffs’ reply brief is here, and makes that clear.
The lawsuit has other issues as well, including the 2011 law that says the two older major parties always get the best spot on general election ballots. The oral argument is January 9, 2012, at 3:30 p.m., in Nashville.
The Atlantic has this lengthy story about Buddy Roemer.
