On December 16, Buddy Roemer filed for the Texas presidential primary, which requires a $5,000 filing fee. He will be one of nine candidates on the ballot. The others are Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. The primary will be April 3.
Roemer’s stance is that he is simultaneously seeking the Americans Elect nomination and the Republican nomination.
Portland, Maine, used Instant Runoff Voting for its city elections last month for the first time. The Bangor Daily News has this story about reactions to Portland’s experience. The story reveals that an opponent of Instant Runoff Voting from San Francisco has taken an interest in fighting IRV in Portland.
On December 19, Sarah Palin said publicly, “It’s not too late for folks to jump in” to the race for the Republican presidential nomination. See this story. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
Last month, some Democratic Party activists and their allies filed two lawsuits against the new district boundaries for North Carolina U.S. House seats and legislative seats. The cases are in state court and are called Dickson v Rucho, and North Carolina State Conference of NAACP v North Carolina.
The boundaries were drawn by the Republican-majority state legislature, and the lawsuits charge that the boundaries violate the State Constitution because they split too many communities and counties unnecessarily, and also that too many districts are either overwhelmingly black or overwhelming white. See this story from last week, describing the lawsuits.
On December 19, a lower state court held a scheduling conference in the case, and set an oral argument for January 12 on the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuits. If the state fails to win that, then there will be a trial, probably in March 2012 at the earliest. North Carolina’s primary is set for May 8, but if there is a trial, it seems very likely the primary will need to be postponed. If that happens, the state will be forced to extend the independent candidate deadline to a later date. Currently, independent candidate petitions are due June 14. Court precedents in the 4th circuit say that the independent candidate petition deadline cannot be earlier than the primary. Any extension of the petition deadline would help. North Carolina independent candidate petition requirements are so bad, no independent has ever qualified for any statewide office (except President), and none has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot for U.S. House either. In 2004, when redistricting was delayed, the state temporariy set the independent candidate petition deadline in July.
On December 19, Orange County, California finished checking the Americans Elect petition signatures from that county and reported the results to the California Secretary of State. There are now more than enough valid signatures on the petition, even though not all counties have yet reported their results.
Americans Elect is only the second party in California to qualify using the obscure 10% petition procedure. The only other group that ever did that petition in California was Henry Wallace’s Independent Progressive Party in 1947-1948. The 10% petition procedure has existed in California since 1937. Generally, new parties choose the easier 1% registration method, which has existed in the law since 1929.
The only other state in which a new party ever obtained a spot on the ballot by completing a 10% petition is Nevada, where the law required a petition of 10% of the last vote for U.S. House between the years 1893 and 1917. Parties that met the Nevada 10% at least once are the Socialist Party in 1904 and the Prohibition Party in 1916. After the Prohibition Party did it in 1916, the legislature listened to the party’s complaint about how difficult it had been, and lowered the requirement to 3%.
