On March 8, the Alabama Senate Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics & Elections Committee passed SB 17. This is Senator Cam Ward’s bill to lower the number of signatures needed for ballot access (for office other than President) from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5%. Thanks to Josh Cassity for this news. UPDATE: the 1.5% applies to statewide independent candidates. The petition for new and previously unqualified parties would be 1.5% or 5,000 signatures, whichever is less.
On March 8, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, ruled against the Libertarian Party, which was seeking a court order to require the Election Board to count write-in votes for Bob Barr in the November 2008 election. Barr was the only presidential candidate who had filed a declaration of write-in candidacy. Judge Howell upheld the constitutionality of refusing to count the write-ins for a declared write-in presidential candidate, unless the vote-counting computer believes that a write-in candidate might have won the election. Here is the 23-page opinion.
In 1972, supporters of Benjamin Spock, presidential candidate of the Peoples Party, had filed a lawsuit to obtain write-in space for president on general election ballots in the District of Columbia. That case was called Kamins v Board of Elections, and was in the D.C. Court system, not the federal court system. The D.C. Court of Appeals said, “The Board was in error when it failed to count appellant’s vote…The fundamental nature of the right involved persuades us that construction of the statute in favor of the franchise is the course which we must follow.” On remand to the D.C. Superior Court, that lower court wrote, “Ordered, that the Defendant Board of Elections count the names of write-in candidates for President and Vice-President, provided said write-in candidate has a qualified slate of electors whose names and affidavits have been filed with the Defendant Board of Elections.”
Notwithstanding that court order, the D.C. Board of Elections has never tallied the write-in votes for any write-in presidential candidate in the general election. After the Kamins decision, the Board passed a regulation saying only the total number of all presidential write-ins must be counted, and that no count need be made of how many write-ins any individual candidate received, unless the total number of write-ins showed a write-in candidate might have won.
Judge Howell ruled that the court order in Kamins was made obsolete by a 2004 decision of the D.C. Court of Appeals, Best v D.C. Board of Elections, 852 A.2d 915 (2004). That decision said the Board must count write-ins in the Green Party’s presidential primary, because the number of write-ins might have elected a delegate to the Green Party’s national convention. That decision did not involve the constitutionality of the ban on counting write-in votes for candidates who clearly didn’t win; it merely construed it, to say that the Green Party presidential primary write-ins must be counted because someone might actually have won on write-in votes. Yet Judge Howell said, “If the court (in the Best case) viewed the regulation as inconsistent with Kamins, it presumably would have said so.” That conclusion does not follow logically.
Judge Howell also said the regulation is constitutional, because the burden on the voters is “slight”, which is, of course, a value judgment. She did not mention Bush v Gore, which said, “Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.”
On March 6, Estonia held a national election. Almost 25% of the voters voted by internet. See this story.
On March 3, a U.S. District Court in Rhode Island approved settlement of the lawsuit Matson v Town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, 10-435-ML. The lawsuit had been filed last October by John O. Matson, an independent candidate for U.S. House in Rhode Island’s 2nd district. He challenged a city ordinance that banned political signs in residential areas that are larger than six square feet. He also challenged the provision that no sign may ever be posted on a tree, even if the sign was posted by the person who owns the tree. And he challenged the provision that permitted political signs only within 60 days of an election. The ACLU represented him. Here is the consent decree.
He prevailed on all three points. Matson had been one of three candidates in the race for U.S. House, 2nd district, last year. He polled 8.4%. The Democratic incumbent, James Langevin, had been re-elected with 59.9%, and the Republican nominee, Mark Zaccaria, had polled 31.8%.
Tim Eyman, a leading proponent of the initiative process in Washington state, has this commentary, rejoicing that SB 5297 and HB 1668 failed to pass in Washington state this year. The bills, as originally written, required signature-gathering businesses to register with the Secretary of State, and allowed the businesses to be prosecuted if any of their employees committed an act of fraud.
As the bill passed various committees in the State Senate, it was amended to bar petitioners from being within 15 feet of a store entrance or exit without the property owner’s permission (Washington is one of the few states in which the State Supreme Court has ruled that shopping centers must permit petitioning on shopping center property). Also the bill was amended to require that paid circulators must print their name, address, and employer on each petition sheet, whereas volunteer petitions did not need to do this, nor did circulators who were employed by a union.
