The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has this article, pointing out that this year, approximately 60% of incumbents running for re-election have no one running against them. Yet, the state continues to defend its ballot access laws on the grounds that they are needed to prevent the general election ballot from being too crowded. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
On June 1, attorneys for Steve Kelly asked U.S. District Court Judge Sam Haddon to extend the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline for 2012 only. As noted previously, late on Friday, May 25, Judge Haddon had declared the March deadline unconstitutional. Then the Secretary of State said the new deadline, for this year, will be May 29, which was the very day that the press and the public first became aware of the decision. The new brief, filed by the ACLU (attorneys for Kelly) asks the Judge to set an August 15 deadline for this year, on the grounds that it denies due process to set a new deadline which, in practical terms, couldn’t be met.
August 15 is the deadline for independent presidential candidate petitions to be submitted to Montana county elections officials. Therefore, it is obvious that August 15 is administratively feasible.
The San Jose Mercury News has this fairly long analysis of how top-two “open primary” systems injure minor parties, especially in California. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
Randall Hayes has obtained the number of registered voters in each party in Louisiana, as of June 1. See his blog here, which has the complete list of all parties and how many registrants they have. The most surprising news is that Americans Elect has been running a registration drive in Louisiana. It has 803 registrants.
Louisiana law says a group becomes a qualified party if it obtains at least 1,000 registrants, and also it must pay a fee of $1,000. After it attains party status, it keeps it as long as it runs a candidate (for office other than president, vice-president, or presidential elector) every four years. It is not known if Americans Elect will finish its registration drive to attain the 1,000 registrants needed for party status.
The Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Reform Parties have all gained registrations in Louisiana since January 2012, but Democratic Party registration has declined.
On June 1, the California Secretary of State released a new registration tally. Compared to the last registration tally, the tally of April 6, there are only miniscule changes. The only political party that gained, as a share of the registered voters, is the American Independent Party. Oddly enough, even the “No party preference” category declined slightly as a percentage of the total. The only category that increased, other than the AIP, is the “other” category, and almost all of that increase was inside Los Angeles County.
Here is a link to the new Report. Americans Elect registration declined from 3,104 to 3,030. All the other qualified parties gained in number of registrants, but (except for the AIP) not as a percentage of the total.
