The November 28 edition of “The Hill”, a leading newspaper for covering Congress, has this story about Jill Stein’s campaign for the Green Party presidential nomination, with emphasis on her recent appearances at “Occupy” meetings in several cities. Thanks to Green Party Watch for the link.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp appointed an Elections Advisory Council on January 27, 2011. Sometime during December, the Council expects to release its recommendations for improvements in the Georgia election laws. The final recommendation will probably be to retain the 1% statewide petition requirement, and the 5% district petition requirement. However, the recommendation will be that the percentages be based on the last presidential vote, instead of the number of registered voters.
This would cut the number of signatures for statewide petitions from 51,845 signatures to 39,245, and cut the number of signatures for U.S. House from approximately 20,000, to approximately 15,000. UPDATE: it is always possible the final recommendations will be more favorable. Activists in Georgia are working for a better recommendation.
According to this story, the Lubbock County government attorney recently advised the county elections officials that the redistricting lawsuit currently pending may cause Texas to hold its 2012 primary in May instead of March. This would put the petition deadline for new political parties, and for non-presidential independent candidates, into July. Texas law ties the date of the primary to those petition deadlines. Oddly, however, the petition deadline for independent presidential candidates is not tied to the primary date, and would remain in early May. But because Texas won’t let minor party and independent candidates circulate petitions until after the primary is over, obviously the independent presidential deadline would need to be changed as well, or otherwise the law would only give one week for the circulation of an independent presidential candidate petition.
The last time Texas held its primary in May in a presidential year was in 1984. Ever since 1988 it has been in March.
United Russia, the party that has been ruling Russia for many years, failed to poll as much as 50% of the popular vote in the December 4 Parliamentary elections, according to this and many other news stories.
Every week, the Americans Elect web page displays the number of signatures that have been collected so far on its various petitions for party status. This last week’s total is 2,152,890, which is 45,148 more than the total a week before then.
