Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar has this Slate piece, arguing that the worst flaw in Virginia’s presidential primary ballot access scheme is that the state won’t permit write-ins in primaries. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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On January 3, 2012, Gatewood Galbraith died. He was one of the Reform Party’s most successful nominees for Governor of any state. In 1999, as the Reform Party nominee, he had polled 15.42% for Governor of Kentucky, in a race against a Democrat, a Republican, and a Natural Law Party opponent. The only other Reform Party nominees for Governor of any state who ever polled more than 10% of the vote were Jesse Ventura in Minnesota in 1998 and Tom Golisano in New York in 2002. See this news story. He was 64. The story does not mention the cause of death.
Galbraith also ran as an independent for Governor of Kentucky in November 2011. He did well in that race as well, polling 8.99%. Here is his wiki page. Thanks to Larry West for this news.
According to this story, a member of the Canadian House of Commons, Peter Goldring, has left the Conservative Party and now lists his party affiliation as “Civil Libertarian.” He is from Alberta and has been in Parliament since 1997. Assuming that he should be classified as an independent, he is the only independent in the Canadian House of Commons.
The petition deadline for presidential candidates running in the District of Columbia presidential primary is January 4, 2012. The District of Columbia’s web page, which was updated on January 3, show that only four Republican presidential candidates have even picked up blank petition forms. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have filed their petitions, but Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich have not, although they did pick up petition blanks earlier. Chances are that Paul and Gingrich will file tomorrow. But it is extremely likely that Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum won’t qualify, because they haven’t started collecting, and the deadline is tomorrow. Republicans need 296 signatures, and only registered Republicans can sign.
President Obama has already filed his signatures, and no one else took out petition blanks to appear on the Democratic primary ballot. Jill Stein has taken out petition blanks to appear on the Green Party presidential primary, but she hasn’t filed them yet. She needs 41 valid signatures of registered Greens.
On January 3, a 3-judge U.S. District Court invalidated West Virginia’s U.S. House district boundaries. The vote was 2-1. Here is the opinion, which is interesting reading, especially the second half. The plan was rejected because one of the districts has a population of almost 5,000 more voters than one of the other districts. The opinion points out that no other state that has finished redistricting since the 2010 census has a population deviation greater than .03% (except for the Arkansas plan). But West Virginia’s plan has a .79% deviation.
One of the interesting facts in the opinion is that West Virginia and Iowa are the only states that have ever had at least two districts, in which the district boundaries have never split a county. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.