On March 2, the Tennessee Attorney General’s office filed a notice, indicating that he expects to appeal the ballot access case to the 6th circuit. The case is Green Party of Tennessee v Hargett. On February 3, the U.S. District Court had held the state’s ballot access law for minor parties to be unconstitutional.
On March 1, a Missouri state trial court struck down a portion of the law on statewide initiatives in Missouri. This story explains that the law requires a financial impact statement for any initiative to be prepared by the State Auditor. But, the court said, the Missouri Constitution limits the powers of the State Auditor to specified duties, and preparing an impact statement for initiatives isn’t one of those duties.
On March 1, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed H391, which abolishes the presidential primary, effective this year. If the bill had not passed, the primary would have been May 15.
Generally, when other states have abolished presidential primaries, the rationale is to save election-administration expense. But Idaho is holding its primary for all other office besides President on May 15 anyway, so the bill barely saves any money. The major parties are using caucuses instead of the presidential primary, but even a non-binding “beauty contest” would have attracted a lot of attention to Idaho, and probably increased primary turnout.
Two states will hold presidential primaries on May 15: Nebraska and Oregon.
Roanoke College Polls has released a poll of the Virginia Republican presidential primary. Virginia’s primary ballot only lists Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, and write-ins aren’t allowed. The poll is unusual because it not only asked about the two candidates who are actually on the ballot, it also asked Republicans this hypothetical question: if Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum were on the ballot, who would you vote for?
The results for the actual primary are: Mitt Romney 56%, Ron Paul 21%, the remainder undecided or won’t vote.
The results if all four were on the ballot: Mitt Romney 31%, Rick Santorum 27%, Newt Gingrich 13%, Ron Paul 12%. Thus, 40% of the voters would like to cast a vote that in the actual election is not permitted.
Astoundingly, no Virginia legislator has introduced any bill to ease the statewide petition requirements. The only bill that might have helped give voters a free choice, had it been enacted in time, is HB 1132, to permit write-ins in primaries. The House passed that bill, but the Senate postponed consideration until 2013.
It is true that this year, the Virginia legislature passed a bill to abolish the in-district residency requirement for circulators, but that bill makes no difference for statewide petitions. It only helps candidates for district office, such as U.S. House and state legislature. Although statewide petitions do have a distribution requirement (400 signatures from each U.S. House district), the in-district residency requirement for circulators, for the last ten years or so, has not applied to statewide petition circulators.
Medill Reports has this interesting article about Illinois primaries. The focus of the article is whether Democrats will choose a Republican primary ballot on March 20, with the motivation of voting for a Republican presidential candidate perceived to be a weaker general election opponent to President Obama. The article says that many Illinois voters don’t realize they are free to ask for any party’s primary ballot, regardless of which party’s primary ballot they had previously chosen.
