A Connecticut Democratic Party nominee for Probate Judge has sued the Secretary of State to get on the November ballot. See this story. Apparently his paperwork was lost in the mail, or perhaps lost within the Secretary of State’s office. See this story. The candidate has already lost in lower state court, but the State Supreme Court will hear his appeal.
A Rasmussen Poll released on September 14 shows that Tom Tancredo, Constitution Party gubernatorial nominee in Colorado, has 25%, whereas the Republican nominee, Dan Maes, has 21%. Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper has 46%, “other candidate” has 1%, and 6% are undecided. The other candidates on the ballot are Libertarian Jaimes Brown, and two independent candidates, Jason Clark and Paul Fiorino.
Capitolbeatok has this lengthy coverage of Ralph Nader’s recent speech in Oklahoma City. Nader spoke generally about ballot access in that state, which is clearly and obviously the worst state in the nation for presidential candidate ballot access. No one in Oklahoma has been permitted to vote for anyone for President, other than the Democratic or Republican nominees, for the last 9 years. Thanks to Theresa Amato for the link.
The New York Daily News has discovered that the New York State Board of Elections has made a quiet decision to credit the votes to the Democratic and Republican Parties, when a voter votes for one candidate twice (once on the ballot line of one of the two major parties, and once on the line of a smaller party). See this story.
The story does not explain what the State Board of Elections will do in the case of a candidate who has the nomination of two parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties. For example, there have been candidates in the past who had the nomination of both the Conservative Party and the Right to Life Party, but not the Republican nor Democratic Parties. Nor does the story explain what will be done in the case of a candidate who has the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican Parties. There are always many candidates for Justice of the Supreme Court who have the nomination of both major parties.
This problem did not generally arise in the past in New York state, because in the past New York state used mechanical voting machines, and the machine physically prevented a voter from voting twice for the same candidate, on two different party lines. But not all votes in New York state in the past were cast on mechanical voting machines (for example, mail ballots were used for certain absentee voters), so there must be a New York state precedent for this problem.
Vermont, a fusion state, was frustrated by voters who cast a vote for one candidate on two different party lines. Vermont found that up to 3% of the voters sometimes voted this way. Vermont’s response was to eliminate separate lines on the ballot for fusion candidates, which meant that there would only be one empty square for the voter to mark an “X” for any particular candidate. This is sometimes called aggregated fusion. Other states that use aggregated fusion, to avoid the problem, are California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
According to this story, the West Virginia Republican Party state chair says his party may sue the Secretary of State over her plan to put the special election for U.S. Senate on the same ballot as the other offices up on November 2, 2010. A quick review of the West Virginia election laws doesn’t seem to provide any basis for the party’s complaint, however. The 2010 bill setting up procedures for the special U.S. Senate election merely says, “A special election shall be held to fill the unexpired term of the vacancy in the office of U.S. Senate existing on July 1, 2010, and the election shall be held in conjunction with the general election of November 2, 2010.” It doesn’t say the special election should be on a separate piece of paper.
Nothing in the remainder of the election law seems to say anything about whether special elections should be on the same ballot with the regular election. It’s possible that there is something there that is relevant, and if the Republican Party sues, that may become clearer.
