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.
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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%.
Now that the Pennsylvania petition requirement for 2012 is known (see post immediately below), it is possible to know almost exactly that the national petition total for a presidential candidate to get on all 51 ballots in 2012 will be 708,482 signatures. This calculation involves using the easier method to get on the ballot in each state. The total isn’t quite exact yet and depends on estimates for Delaware and the District of Columbia. The number from Delaware is based on how many people are registered to vote as of December 31, 2011, which lies in the future. And the D.C. requirement depends on the number of registered voters as of July 1, 2012. But these registration totals can be estimated now.
The 708,482 figure is 6.2% higher than the 2008 total, which was 667,248.
Sometimes, the “easier” method in each state is somewhat ambiguous. For California, which has three methods, the easiest method is deemed to be the independent candidate petition, which requires 172,859 valid signatures. It seems apparent that it is easier to get 172,859 petition signatures than to get 103,004 registrations, and it is obviously easier to get 172,859 signatures than 1,030,040 signatures. For Delaware, the assumption is that it is easier to get 650 registrations than to get 6,500 signatures. For Ohio, even though five parties were placed on the ballot by the Secretary of State with no petition, the calculation assumes it is easier to get 5,000 signatures than to persuade the Secretary of State to recognize any more parties. For Vermont and Mississippi, the calculation assumes it is easier to provide a list of state party officers, than to obtain 1,000 signatures.
The press in the United States has for months been reporting that it takes 2,900,000 signatures to get on the ballot for President in all 51 jurisdictions. Reporters confuse the number of signatures that Americans Elect says it plans to collect, with the actual legal requirements. Americans Elect is not using the easier method in each state.
Just six states account for 61.6% of the entire national requirement. The six states are California, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and Indiana. There is a possibility that North Carolina, which requires the second greatest number of signatures of any state, will improve its law in the 2012 legislative session in time to effect the 2012 election.
Pennsylvania has finished compiling the November 8, 2011 official election returns for Judge of the Superior Court. The winner, David Wecht, received 1,030,004 votes. Therefore, the number of signatures needed for statewide candidates to get on the November ballot by petition is 20,601 valid signatures.