Previous posts on this page in the last week said New York had finished its official vote tally. That was an error. New York normally never posts election returns on its web page until they are official, but this year New York did post election returns before they were official. According to David Wasserman, New York still has as many as 400,000 votes remaining to count.
The second half of this article in the Arizona Daily Sun contains some information about campaign spending for and against Arizona’s Proposition 121, the top-two initiative that lost last month. The story quotes Paul Johnson, chief proponent of the initiative, as saying that he should have built a broader coalition in favor of his idea. Johnson says that is why it passed in California. Actually, it passed in California because it was described so poorly on the California ballot, and because proponents outspent opponents 20:1.
The December 16 New York Times has this set of letters, commenting on minor and new political parties, and ideas for such parties. One letter discusses ballot access injustice, and one letter explains proportional representation. The other letters merely talk about the ideas that a desired new political party might promote.
The Peace and Freedom Party ticket of Roseanne Barr for President and Cindy Sheehan for Vice-President’s best county in the U.S. was Trinity County, California. The ticket polled 1.18% in that county, which is a mountainous county just to the east of the Green Party’s best county in the U.S., Humboldt County.
The Barr-Sheehan ticket only appeared on the ballot in California, Colorado, and Florida. So far, write-ins for the ticket have been counted in Alabama, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Outside California, the ticket’s best county was Cheyenne County, Colorado, where it polled .91%. Cheyenne County is on the Kansas border.
Lawsuits are pending in U.S. District Court in both Alabama and Oklahoma against state laws passed last year that moved petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties into March. In Alabama, the lawsuit was filed by the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties. In Oklahoma, the lawsuit was filed by the Green and Libertarian Parties.
In both cases, attorneys for the states have been deposing various minor party state officers and plaintiff-candidates. Their strategy is apparently to deflect the attention of the judge from the issue of the early deadline, onto any perceived defects in the minor parties themselves. Alabama, this month, even took the deposition of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Oklahoma this month has taken the deposition of the current state chair, the previous state chair, and the state chair prior to that.
During the period starting in 1968, federal and state courts have struck down early petition deadlines for minor party and independent candidates in 51 separate lawsuits. There are no court precedents upholding a deadline as early as March for a newly-qualifying party, and only one precedent upholding a petition deadline as early as March for an independent candidate (the Lawrence v Blackwell precedent from 2005, upholding the deadline for independent candidates for office other than president, because Ohio’s major parties also nominated in March). Although the 7th circuit upheld a December (of the year before the election) deadline for non-presidential independents in 1986, in 2006 the 7th circuit reversed itself and invalidated that petition deadline.
Early petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates have been struck down in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah. Such deadlines were enjoined in Hawaii and Idaho, although no declaratory judgment was obtained in those two states.
