The Anchorage Daily News has this story, which pieces together clues that U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski is likely to declare as a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate at 5 p.m. Anchorage time, which is 6 p.m. Pacific time, and 9 p.m. Eastern time. The newspaper says she is flying from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage, today.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections has now tabulated the write-in vote from the September 14 primary. No one had appeared on the Republican primary ballot for Mayor of Washington. However, incumbent Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty received enough write-in votes in the Republican primary, so that he may become the Republican nominee, if he accepts the nomination. He must decide by close of business, September 17;and if he accepts, he must change his registration from “Democratic” to “Republican.” Here is the Board’s tabulation. Write-in candidates also received enough votes in the Republican primary for two other partisan District offices. Thanks to Political Wire for the link. UPDATE: this story says D.C. election law would not allow Fenty to accept the Republican nomination, because he would have switched parties too late. However, he could still be a write-in candidate in the November election.
The Mayor, who had been running for re-election, had lost the Democratic nomination on September 14. He had been elected as a Democrat in 2006.
There is still no decision in the lawsuit filed last year, to force the Board of Elections to count the write-in votes for Bob Barr in the 2008 presidential election.
On September 17, a second U.S. District Court Judge in Virginia upheld the state’s law that won’t let circulators work if they don’t live in the district. The case is Libertarian Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, 1:10-cv-615.
The decision says the the burden on the candidate that he or she only use in-district residents is “not severe”, but the 27-page opinion complete misses the point that the restriction is severe when applied to the circulator. There is not a word in the decision about the rights of circulators. The decision does not even mention the U.S. Supreme Court decision Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation until page 23, only four pages from the end. The U.S. Supreme Court had applied strict scrutiny when it struck down a law banning circulators who aren’t registered voters, but this decision does not mention that the U.S. Supreme Court used strict scrutiny.
The opinion tries to dispose of all the precedents that have struck down residency requirements in other states, by saying those cases only applied to petitions that require more signatures than Virginia does. But, the decision ignores cases that struck down residency requirements for circulators from Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania that did not require a large number of signatures. And it does not mention the 9th and 10th circuit cases, striking down residency for circulators, at all.
Earlier this year, the Vermont legislature moved the independent candidate petition deadline from September to June. On August 25, an independent candidate for the U.S. House, Jerry Trudell, filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the new deadline is unconstitutional. He had submitted his petition a few days before the primary, but the state had refused to accept it, because it was too late. Vermont held its primary this year on August 24.
On September 15, the state filed its brief in Trudell’s lawsuit, defending the law and asking that the lawsuit be dismissed. The case is Trudell v Markowitz, Washington County Superior Court, 612-8-10-WN-cv.
Courts have struck down independent candidate petition deadlines (for office other than President), if the deadline was earlier than the primary, in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Arkansas decision was summarily affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Also, independent presidential candidates won deadline lawsuits against petition deadlines in Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina, and the state legislatures in those states interpreted those decisions to mean that the old deadline was unconstitutional for all independent candidates, not just presidential independent candidates, and improved the deadlines for all independent candidates.
There are no court precedents upholding a state law that sets the petition deadline for independent candidates before the primary (or the day before the primary), except for a strange 1994 decision from the 9th circuit, concerning Washington state, in which none of the plaintiff-candidates had been harmed by the deadline complained about. There had been a 1986 precedent from the 7th circuit upholding such an early deadline, but in 2006 the 7th circuit had overruled that old decision.
On October 13, the Republican, Libertarian, and Reform Party nominees for Governor of Kansas will debate each other on radio. The Democratic nominee refuses to participate. See this story.
