New Mexican, Santa Fe’s Newspaper, Interviews Gary Johnson

Posted on by November 25, 2011
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The New Mexican, Santa Fe’s daily newspaper, has this interview with Gary Johnson, in which Johnson appears to open the door to seeking the Libertarian Party presidential nomination. Unfortunately, Johnson apparently told the interviewer that the Libertarian Party has never polled as much as 1% of the vote for President, when actually the Libertarian Party polled 1.065% for President in 1980. Also the Libertarian Party has polled over 1% of the national U.S. House vote, for its combined vote for U.S. House nominees, in four elections: 2010, 2002, 2000, and 1998.

UPDATE: Politico picked up the story, and added some interesting content of its own. See here.

Eighth Circuit Won’t Rehear North Dakota Ballot Access Case, and Won’t Fix the Factual Error in Original Decision

Posted on by November 25, 2011
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On November 23, the Eighth Circuit refused to rehear Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger, 10-3212, and also refused to amend its original October 2011 opinion, which erroneously said that when a party submits 7,000 valid signatures, it remains ballot-qualified indefinitely afterwards. The October 2011 decision had said North Dakota needs a primary vote test for minor party candidates, because otherwise the ballot would become too crowded because there is no other ballot access barrier. In truth, a party that submits 7,000 signatures is only on the ballot for one election, and it is then removed from the ballot unless it polled 5% for Governor or President (if the last election was a presidential election year) or Secretary of State (if the last election was a midterm year).

It is very odd for a court to fail to fix a factual error, when the factual error is pointed out in a rehearing request. Generally the panel denies rehearing, but issues an amended opinion fixing the error.

California Referendum Petition on State Senate District Boundaries has Uncertain Effect on 2012 Election

Posted on by November 24, 2011
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Most of the nation’s large-population states are having difficulty completing the redistricting process in time for the 2012 election. Among those states is California, which has an independent redistricting commission. Republican activists filed a referendum petition against the State Senate districts drawn by the commission. However, according to this story, the validity of the referendum petition won’t be established until mid-March 2012, after the process for candidates to file for the primary ballot has begun.

Proponents of the referendum petition say the new boundaries should not be implemented, even if the referendum petition’s validity hasn’t yet been determined. Proponents of the current boundaries disagree.

Ballotpedia Carries Data on Cost per Signature to Put Initiatives on Ballot

Posted on by November 24, 2011
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Ballotpedia has this article, with data on how much it cost to put 2010 initiatives on the statewide ballot of all the states that had statewide initiatives that year. The average cost to get an initiative on 2010 ballots was $3.29 per required signatures. Although 49 statewide initiatives qualified in 2010, only four of them got on the ballot without hiring a petition management company.

Arizona Republican Governor, Legislators Debate Whether to Ask Voters to Repeal Independent Districting Commission

Posted on by November 24, 2011
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This story focuses on an internal Republican Party disagreement in Arizona on whether to put a ballot measure on the presidential primary ballot set for February 28 to repeal the Independent Redistricting Commission. The Governor must call a special session by November 30 to make that happen. Most neutral observers would probably say that it is unfair to put such a partisan measure on the presidential primary ballot, when it is expected that the only parties holding a presidential primary will be the Republican and Green Parties.

If Arizona didn’t have an Independent Redistricting Commission, the legislature and the Governor would be in charge of redistricting, and Republicans control both those branches of government. So repealing authorization for the Commission is something that, likely, Democrats would oppose strongly. But because there will be no Democratic presidential primary, turnout of Democrats would probably be very low.