Americans Elect’s web page updates the number of signatures it has collected nationwide on a weekly basis. This week’s national total is 2,107,742, which is 50,501 signtures more than the previous week’s total.
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On Friday, November 25, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Texas refused a request by the state that the legislature’s own redistricting plan (for both houses of the legislature) be used, instead of the one drawn up by that Court. Texas said it would be asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the lower court. See this story. The U.S. District Court vote was 2-1. The case is Perez v Texas, 5:11-cv-360, in the western district in San Antonio.
The Times-Picayune, the daily newspaper of New Orleans, has this story about Buddy Roemer’s association with Americans Elect. The story has new information about the interaction between the two.
In 2011, no party with “Socialist” in its name placed any nominees on the ballot in any state for any regularly-scheduled federal or state elections. This was the first calendar year since 1886 for which that statement was true. However, there were Socialist Workers Party, and Socialist Party, nominees on the ballot in 2011 for a few elections for local office, and also the SWP had a nominee on the ballot in a 2011 New York special U.S. House election.
Usually, in odd years, either the Socialist Party, or the Socialist Workers Party, places nominees on the ballot in New Jersey for state office. New Jersey elects all its state offices in odd years, and has easy ballot access. But in 2011, neither party got on the ballot for state office in that state. Other states with odd year elections for state office are Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
The first state to have candidates from a party with the word “Socialist” in its name was Ohio, where the Socialist Labor Party ran a slate of statewide offices in 1877.
On November 23, a Circuit Court in Cook County, Illinois, refused to grant an injunction that would have required election officials to recognize the Green Party as a ballot-qualified party in the four U.S. House districts and four legislative districts in which it polled over 5% in 2010. The party is appealing. Here is the 8-page decision.
Illinois election law says if a party got 5% of the vote in the previous election for any partisan office, then it is a ballot-qualified party automatically in the next election for that office. But election officials believe that if the partisan office is a district office, and the district boundaries change, that status lapses. In 2010, the Green Party polled 34.5% for State Representative in the 39th district in Chicago, and 25.6% for State Representative in the 115th district in Carbondale, and 17.4% for State Representative in the 105th district in Pontiac. However, even the Green Party’s status in those districts will go unrecognized, unless the party’s appeal changes the legal outcome.