The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) has now raised virtually enough money to pay for preparation of the transcript in Trudell v Markowitz, the case challenging the Vermont June petition deadline for independent candidates. The appeal to the State Supreme Court can now proceed. Thanks to all who donated, especially the generous individual who gave $500, and also the half-dozen of you who gave $100.

June petition deadlines have been declared unconstitutionally early in Alaska, Nevada, Arizona, South Dakota, Massachusetts, and Kansas. In the Trudell case, the lower state court ignored all such precedents. Incredibly, the lower court even ignored the holding in Anderson v Celebrezze, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1983 that said early petition deadlines for independent candidates for President are unconstitutional. Instead, the lower court judge based his decision on Storer v Brown, a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision that did not even deal with the issue of early petition deadlines. The Storer decision has language saying there is no constitutional right for a candidate to enter a race late. The lower court opinion said that Storer v Brown had been issued in 1987, which of course makes it appear that Storer supercedes Anderson. Actually Storer v Brown came out in 1974.

Every week, the Americans Elect web page shows how many signatures have been collected nationwide on its ballot access petitions. The new total is 2,253,037, an increase during the last week of 56,790 signatures. That is high, relative to the previous week’s collection of 43,357 signatures.

One goal of Americans Elect is to be finished in thirty states by the end of this calendar year, which would give it qualified status in more states than any other party besides the Democratic and Republican Parties. The Libertarian Party currently has 29 states, but it might be finished in South Dakota and New Hampshire by the end of the year.

The California Secretary of State is expected to announce on Monday, December 19, that Americans Elect has enough valid signatures on its California petition for party status. Only seven counties haven’t finished checking the signatures, and they have a total of 177,375 raw signatures to process. But in the remaining counties, Americans Elect already has 981,858 valid signatures, and just needs another 48,222 to be across the finish line. The Americans Elect petition drive in California will apparently be the only time any petition in any state with a requirement greater than 1,000,000 signatures ever succeeded. The runner-up is the California recall election of 2003, which requires signatures equal to 12% of the last gubernatorial vote. But, the turnout was so low in 2002, 12% of the 2003 gubernatorial vote was 897,158 signatures, less by far than 10% of the 2010 gubernatorial turnout. The California initiative for constitutional amendments is 8% of the last gubernatorial vote.

On December 16, the Justice Party filed its letter with the California Secretary of State for “political body” status. A “political body” is a group that says it will try to qualify as a party. The Justice Party will try to persuade 103,008 Californians to fill out a voter registration card, listing that person as a registered member of the Justice Party.

The statutory deadline for this method for getting on the ballot is January 2, 2012. It is overwhelmingly likely that the California deadline is unconstitutional. There are no reported lawsuit decisions that uphold a mandatory deadline for a group to qualify to appear on the November ballot, with a party label, earlier than May of the election year. And the deadline is especially vulnerable in connection with a presidential election.