According to this story, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler wants the legislature to provide that when a write-in voter forgets, or doesn’t know, to “X” the box next to the name just written in, that vote should be invalid. Ironically, just this month, California changed its policy in the opposite direction, to say that these type of write-ins are valid.

Gessler has been a terrible disappointment for voting rights advocates. Before he was Secretary of State, he was an attorney in private practice. He represented Ralph Nader in Nader’s winning 2004 ballot access lawsuit. In a separate lawsuit, Gessler also represented Walt Brown, the Socialist Party presidential nominee in 2004, and won a ballot access case for Brown as well. The case Gessler won for Walt Brown concerned the deadline for qualifying as an independent or minor party nominee, which was on July 4 in 2004. After Gessler won the case, the legislature moved the deadline to the first week in June, which gives Colorado the nation’s second-earliest qualifying deadline in the nation for independent presidential candidates. Even though Gessler fully understands the harm done by a too-early deadline, he has failed to respond to messages suggesting that he ask the legislature to make that deadline later. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link.

The Amsterdam News of August 7 has Lenora Fulani’s warm and personal remembrance of Fred Newman. The Amsterdam News is a New York city publication. Thanks to Sarah Lyons for the link.

On August 11, Elliot Ackerman, Chief Operating Officer for Americans Elect, appeared on the Stephen Colbert show. The most significant news from the interview is that Ackerman did not imply, suggest, or say, that Americans Elect has a centrist or a moderate agenda. Last week he had suggested that it did. But, on the show, when asked, “What does Americans Elect stand for?” he said that it stands for whatever its delegates want it to stand for. A delegate is any registered voter in the U.S. who chooses to participate in the Americans Elect presidential process. At no point did he even mouth the words, “centrist” or “moderate”, or any other word that suggests any political agenda.

Ackerman strongly implied that the process by which the two major parties choose their presidential nominees, in which the voters of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, have more influence than the voters of other states, is a flawed process.

The interview will leave viewers believing that it requires 2,900,000 valid signatures to get a presidential candidate on the ballot of all 50 states. Actually the number is approximately 850,000, and that will drop to approximately 740,000 if the new Florida ballot access law is overturned. Ackerman made a statement that Americans Elect will provide the first opportunity by which a presidential candidate can be directly nominated by the American people. Actually, however, the Reform Party in 1996 provided the same opportunity for all U.S. voters to nominate a presidential candidate. The Reform Party chose its presidential nominee by a mail-ballot (any registered voter could obtain a ballot). Then the Reform Party obtained ballot access for that nominee in all 50 states. Ackerman’s statement would have been accurate if it had specified that this is the first time using the internet to choose the nominee.