On January 23, the California Secretary of State ruled that if Americans Elect doesn’t want a presidential primary ballot prepared for it in California, the Secretary will accept that decision. Americans Elect had already told California that it prefers not to have a government presidential primary prepared for itself. This decision will save taxpayer dollars, because printing up primary ballots for Americans Elect would probably have cost $2,000,000. Here is the ruling.

Americans Elect also decided not to have county central committee elections. The California election law already made it clear that parties are free to decline county central committee elections for themselves if they wish. The Libertarian Party also doesn’t elect county central committee members.

All qualified parties in California are expected to choose one of four types of party organization plan that are in the election code. Americans Elect chose the Peace & Freedom Party code section. This is the same code section that all California qualified minor parties have chosen during the last 35 years. The other code sections in the election law are titled, “Republican”, “Democratic”, and “American Independent.”

See this blog post from Texas Redistricting, which says that the 3-judge panel in San Antonio has moved the status conference in the redistricting case from February to January 27 at 1 p.m.

Rhode Island requires 1,000 signatures for a presidential candidate to get on a presidential primary ballot. No one can circulate who didn’t file a declaration of candidacy by Saturday, January 21. The only Democrat who filed is President Obama. Seven Republicans filed the declaration of candidacy: Mark Callahan, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.

Presumably, most, but not all, of those Republicans are now circulating the petition, which is due February 2. Of course it is virtually certain that Rick Perry is not circulating a petition. The Rhode Island Republican Party is helping circulate petitions for the candidates it recognizes. Any registered voter may sign, even though Rhode Island has registration by party. The primary is April 24.