On March 27, the Montana corporations who lost in the Montana Supreme Court on December 30, 2011, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal. The issue is whether the First Amendment protects the ability of corporations to spend money speaking about candidates for state office. Here is the petition. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
The Alabama Senate Rules Committee has sent SB 15 to the Senate floor, for a vote on Tuesday, April 3. This is the bill that reduces the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party from over 44,000 signatures, to 5,000 signatures. Thanks to Don Webb for this news.
On March 27, the North Carolina Constitution Party filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against North Carolina’s May petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. The case is North Carolina Constitution Party v Bartlett. It is expected that the North Carolina Green Party will soon join the case.
In 1988, North Carolina’s Board of Elections was so sure that the May petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties is unconstitutional, that it waived the deadline and allowed the New Alliance Party to submit its petition in July.
States in which May and June petition deadlines for newly-qualifying parties to submit their signatures have been held too early, or have been enjoined, are Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Also, in Populist Party v Herschler, a Wyoming case, the 10th circuit said that June is probably too early, but didn’t definitely decide the issue. States in which independent presidential petition deadlines in May and June have been struck down are Arizona, Kansas, and South Dakota. In some instances, the states agreed that their deadlines were too early and didn’t contest the lawsuit. North Carolina clearly has no state interest in requiring newly-qualifying parties to submit the petition in May, because in North Carolina, newly-qualifying parties do not nominate by primary, and the state lets independent candidates submit their petitions in June.
On March 27, the Missouri Supreme Court handed down an order, settling the boundaries of new State House of Representative districts. The order came down on the last day for candidates to file for the primary ballot, only a few hours before the filing deadline. The U.S. House districts are still not settled for sure. See this story.
Earlier this year, a bill in the legislature to postpone the primary filing deadline a month failed to make substantial headway, although technically it could still pass.
National Public Radio has this balanced article about how many independent voters there are in the U.S. The article is written by Scott Neuman. The article does not refer to voter registration data. Current data shows that 42.64% of the voters are registered Democrats, 30.79% are registered Republicans, 24.37% are registered “independent”, and 2.20% are registered in other parties.
