Jon Huntsman Fails to Qualify for Arizona Republican Presidential Primary

Posted on by January 9, 2012
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Filing for the Arizona Republican and Green Party presidential primaries closed on January 10. Jon Huntsman’s paperwork was rejected by the Secretary of State because his signature was not notarized. He was unable to repair the problem, because he had filed only two hours before the deadline.

Arizona does not require anything except a declaration of candidacy, but it must be notarized. Twenty-three Republicans did qualify.

Six Greens will appear on the Green Party primary ballot: three Arizonans, Gerard Davis, Michael Oatman, and Richard Grayson; also three non-Arizonans, Kent Mesplay, Jill Stein, and Gary Swing.

California Legislative Leaders Likely to Support Easing Definition of “Party”

Posted on by January 8, 2012
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Leaders of the California legislature are likely to introduce, and support, a bill to ease the definition of “political party”, to compensate for Proposition 14’s practical elimination of the vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified. The bill will probably be introduced in the next few weeks. It may change the registration membership test from 1% of the last gubernatorial vote, to one-third of 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. It would not take effect this year. That would reduce the registration test from approximately 103,000 members, to approximately 36,000.

Delay in Virginia U.S. House Redistricting Injures Ability of Minor Parties, Independent Presidential Candidates to Start Petitioning

Posted on by January 8, 2012
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The Virginia legislature still hasn’t drawn new U.S. House district boundaries, even though state law says that this job must be done by January 1 of any election year following a new census. Virginia law regarding petitions for the presidential candidates of unqualified parties, and independent presidential candidates, says that these petitions must carry the names of presidential elector candidates. Furthermore, candidates for presidential elector have a residency requirement; the petition must list one elector candidate from each district, plus the two at-large electors.

Because no Virginia resident can know which district he or she will be living in, until after the new districts are drawn, it is impossible for a group, or an independent presidential candidate, to state to circulate the petition. The law says these petitions may start to circulate on January 1 of the presidential election year, but in practice, in 2012 so far, they cannot circulate yet. Virginia does permit stand-in presidential candidates, so if it weren’t for the presidential elector residency problem, any unqualified parties could be circulating petitions for president now. The only qualified parties in Virginia since 1997 have been the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The Virginia election code seems to discriminate against unqualified parties and independent presidential candidates, relative to qualified parties. The law seems to have no requirement that the presidential elector candidates nominated by the qualified parties need live in any particular district. Thanks to Bill Redpath for this news.

The redistricting delay also subtracts from the available petitioning period for candidates for U.S. House. Although a candidate for U.S. House need not live in the district, the circulators must live in the district. The district residency requirement is being litigated.

Two Important Tennessee Election Law Cases have Oral Arguments Soon

Posted on by January 8, 2012
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On January 9, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Haynes, Jr., will hear Green Party of Tennessee et al v Hargett, 3:11-cv-692. The hearing is at 3:30 p.m. in the federal courthouse in Nashville. The issue is whether the new ballot access law, passed in 2011, is constitutional. Judge Haynes had struck down the old law in 2010. The old law required 40,042 valid signatures by March of an election year, and the wording on the petition implied the signers are party members.

The new law requires 40,042 valid signatures, due on April 5. The petition no longer implies that all the signers are party members. The plaintiffs argue that the new law is virtually as bad as the old law, and is still unconstitutional. The 2010 decision is reported, 793 F.Supp.2d 1064, and seems to say that an April petition deadline would also be unconstitutional. No reported court decision has ever upheld a procedure for a new party to get on the ballot that had to be completed by April, if that procedure was the only way for a new party to get on the ballot.

On January 17, the 6th circuit will hear Kurita v The State Primary Board of the Tennessee Democratic Party, 08-6245. This is the interesting case over whether the Democratic Party had the authority in 2008 to declare that Senator Rosalind Kurita was not the nominee of the Democratic Party for one State Senate race, even though she had narrowly won the Democratic primary. Tennessee does not have registration by party and Democratic Party officials believed that Senator Kurita had benefited from the votes of individuals who were loyal to the Republican Party. The U.S. District Court had upheld the ability of the Democratic Party to say that the runner-up was the actual Democratic nominee.