At 3 p.m., Americans Elect will turn in approximately 18,000 signature to the Maryland State Board of Elections, to qualify as a party. The law requires 10,000 valid signatures.
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The Hamilton County Board of Elections expects to finish counting the votes in the disputed 2010 election for Judge of Juvenile Court, by Friday, April 27. This is the race that has created one of lengthiest election-counting disputes in the nation in recent years. The issue involving this race has already been in the U.S. Supreme Court once, and may go there again. Also it has twice been in the 6th circuit. The issue is whether certain provisional ballots should be counted. The underlying issue is the extent to which equal protection applies to the vote-counting process.
The two candidates in that November 2010 election were Tracie Hunter, the Democratic nominee, and John Williams, the Republican nominee. UPDATE: see this story about the ballot-counting process. The public is invited to watch.
Laurie Roth, who tried to obtain the Constitution Party’s presidential nomination, now says she may run as an independent. See this story. She is a talk-radio host in eastern Washington state.
The Florida Secretary of State has many regulations that require qualified minor parties to conduct certain activities. Here is a link to that regulation, 1S-2.050, which is titled, “Cancellation of Political Party Filings.”
One of the regulations requires parties to have had at least $500 “aggregate reported financial activity” during a calendar year. The Florida Secretary of State’s office has notified many qualified minor parties that they are in danger of being removed from the ballot for not having shown at least $500 worth of financial activity during 2011. Parties that have received such letters include the Ecology Party (which nominated Ralph Nader for president in 2008), America’s Party (which nominated Alan Keyes for President in 2008, and was formerly known as America’s Independent Party), the Independence Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Reform Party. Other parties are likely to receive such letters in the near future, because they have already told the Secretary of State in recent filings that they didn’t have any financial activity last year. The parties likely to receive such letters are Americans Elect and the Pirate Party.
Certain other qualified parties received a different letter, saying they are in danger of losing their qualified status because they didn’t make the required financial report for 2011. These parties include the Green Party, the Independent Party, and the Tea Party.
The Ecology Party has already responded to its letter, and has documented that it did have more than $500 financial activity, even though most of it was not for campaigns. The Florida regulation appears vague about what is encompassed in the term “financial activity.”
Steve Brawner, an author of 30 books who also who writes the blog “Independent Arkansas”, has this op-ed in the Arkansas News. The Arkansas News is an on-line daily newspaper covering Arkansas politics. The title of the op-ed is “How Not to Waste Your Vote.”