On March 2, four Indiana officials in St. Joseph County were indicted for facilitating forged petitions in the 2008 presidential primary. One of the officials was Democratic County Chair in that important county (which includes South Bend). The other three were employees of the county voter registration office. They are charged with helping Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get on the Democratic presidential primary ballot, by forging names of voters on the petitions.

Indiana requires 4,500 signatures for candidates in statewide major party primaries for ballot access, and 34,195 signatures for statewide independent candidates and the nominees of newly-qualifying parties. Any registered voter can sign any petition. This incident is one more piece of evidence that petition requirements as low as 4,500 can sometimes be formidable obstacles to ballot access. See this story. Thanks to Ryan Nees for the link.

On April 3, the District of Columbia holds presidential primaries for the Republican, Democratic, and Statehood Green Parties. The only name on the Green Party presidential primary is Jill Stein. However, Roseanne Barr is conducting a write-in campaign. The Green Party has 4,121 registered members in D.C. According to this story, the Barr campaign is using robocalls to ask Green Party registrants to cast a write-in vote for Barr. D.C. has closed presidential primaries.

It is ironic that the D.C. Board of Elections counts write-ins in presidential primaries, but won’t do so for declared write-in candidates for President in the general election. The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. circuit, will rule soon on whether the D.C. policy of refusing to count write-ins for President for declared presidential write-in candidates in November violates the U.S. Constitution.

On June 29, 1892, the Prohibition Party held its national convention in Cincinnati. It nominated John Bidwell for President, and James B. Cranfill for Vice-President. Cranfill was age 33 at the time. He had been born September 12, 1858. He was a Texas physician, teacher, and editor of The Baptist Standard. The party made no secret of his age. Cranfill was praised for having accomplished a great deal despite his relative youth.

Despite the fact that Cranfill didn’t meet the Constitutional age requirement, and that this was well known, no state refused to print his name on the ballot because of his age. The ticket appeared on every ballot except South Dakota’s (where the party missed the filing deadline). In 1892, there were 44 states, and all but eight states used government-printed ballots. The eight states that didn’t have government-printed ballots, and where voters or parties prepared their own ballots, were Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.

No state barred Cranfill from its ballot. Back then, people had a clearer understanding that the true candidates in November are the candidates for presidential elector. The presidential and vice-presidential candidates’ names generally appeared on the ballots as well, but as markers, so the voters would know the intentions of the presidential elector candidates. Also, back then, in every state, voters voted for individual candidates for electors, and weren’t confined to voting for all the members of a slate.

The U.S. Constitution’s provisions concerning the Electoral College have not changed since 1892, but nowadays the public, and even election administrators, don’t understand it as well as they did back then. If people did understand the Electoral College, there would be no instances in which election administrators kept people under the age of 35 years off the ballot, nor would there be any need for lawsuits over whether a particular presidential or vice-presidential candidate is a “natural-born citizen.” The presidential elector candidates would tell the world their intentions. The voters would choose presidential electors. If any presidential elector candidate was elected in November, and in December voted for someone for president who doesn’t meet the constitutional qualifications, it would be up to Congress in January to refuse to count that electoral vote. Congress is free to refuse to count electoral votes. The precedent was set in 1872, when Congress refused to count the three electoral votes that had been cast for Horace Greeley. Congress ruled this way because Greeley had died after the November election but before the December meeting of the Electoral College.