Americans Elect’s web page, www.americanselect.org, now features a running tally of how many signatures it has collected for ballot access in 2012 across the entire nation. The total shown for June 11 is 1,174,055 signatures. The tally seems to be updated daily.
The vast majority of these signatures have come from California.
Wisconsin will soon be holding recall elections against 6 Republican State Senators, and 3 Democratic State Senators. In Wisconsin, the recall process is different than it is in most states. If a Wisconsin recall petition gets enough signatures, the recall election ballot does not ask the voters to either retain or oust that particular incumbent. Instead, a successful recall petition merely means that a new special election is held, and the incumbent is free to run in that special election.
If only one person files in each party’s primary in any of these particular special recall elections, then there is no primary for any party, and the general election for that particular seat will be in July. But if even one party has more than a single member running, then there is a primary (for whichever party has more than one person running) in July, for that particular district. In that case, the actual special recall election is postponed to August.
It appears from this article that both major parties are recruiting candidates to run in primaries in these special elections. For example, if a Republican State Senator is being recalled, Republicans may recruit a candidate to run in the Democratic primary in that district, so that the special recall election in that district is postponed to August. That gives the incumbent Senator more time to campaign. Also, it gives the incumbent Senator’s supporters a chance to campaign against the likely party-supported Democratic challenger, by forcing the mainstream Democratic challenger to win a Democratic primary.
The newspaper story refers to “fake” Democrats and “fake” Republicans. Wisconsin doesn’t have registration by party, and is an open primary state. Therefore, any individual, no matter what his or her convictions, is always free at any time to run in any party’s primary. This system makes it possible for Democrats (for example) to place someone in a Republican primary, even though that person is loyal to the Democratic Party and is only running to injure the bona fide Republican.
Straight-ticket devices have been repealed, or are likely to be eliminated, in three states this year. On May 25, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed AB 7, an omnibus election law bill that eliminates the device. On June 8, the North Carolina Senate passed SB 411 by a vote of 30-17; that bill repeals the device. And, the current New Mexico Secretary of State, Diana Duran, has let it be known that she will eliminate the device from the 2012 general election ballot. New Mexico’s eletion laws do not authorize the device, but past Secretaries of State have placed it on general election ballots anyway.
Straight-ticket devices injure independent candidates, and they also injure minor party candidates for lower-ticket offices such as state legislature and partisan county office. Ben Manski, Green Party nominee for the Wisconsin legislature last year, actually won his election when one only looks at ballots in which voters did not use the straight-ticket device. But when the ballots of voters who did use it are included, he lost.
Assuming the North Carolina bill is signed into law, in 2012 the only states that will still use straight-ticket devices are: Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. States that have repealed the device in the last 15 years (in addition to the states already mentioned) include Illinois and Missouri. Bills to repeal the device have been introduced repeatedly in Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia, but they never pass.
A Superior Court in Vermont will hold a trial in Trudell v Markowitz on July 14-15. This is the lawsuit that challenges the June petition deadline for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties. The Vermont primary is in August. Between 1890 and 1939, the independent candidate petition deadline had been in October, and between 1939 and 2009, it had been in September. The change from September to June, made in 2009, was drastic.
The judge in this case had already ruled against the state’s motion to dismiss the case. The prior procedural ruling makes it clear that the state must explain why it needs a deadline in June.
On June 2, the Initiative and Referendum Institute filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C., in its case against the postal regulation that bars petitioning on all interior post office sidewalks. This case was filed in 2000. The opening parts of the brief explain why the case is taking so long. The brief highlights the fact that the evidence already submitted overwhelming shows that post office sidewalks have been traditionally used for First Amendment activity.
