During the early summer of 2011, the Americans Elect web page posted a new national signature count for its various statewide petitions every week. This national total represented the sum of how many signatures had been collected around the nation on its various state petitions. But the July 28 posting of 1,747,557 had not been increased since then, during August. But on August 30 the web page showed a new national total, 1,755,707, an increase of only 8,150 signatures during August.
Howard Wilson, a long-time Libertarian Party activist in New Hampshire, has this op-ed in the Monitor, the daily newspaper of Concord, New Hampshire. Wilson points out that some of the Republican Party officials who are criticizing the state chair of the Republican Party for signing a Libertarian Party ballot access petition, themselves signed petitions to put Libertarians on the 2010 ballot. The op-ed is also interesting for its details about petitioning in New Hampshire.
In New Hampshire, only a single petition is permitted on any particular petition sheet. This explains what is meant when Wilson says the petition was returned to the Republican Party state chair. It is a way for him to have withdrawn his signature.
This CalBuzz article says Democrats in the California legislature may introduce a bill (or amend another election law bill to add a new provision) soon to provide that initiatives, no matter when they are submitted, will not appear on the June primary ballot. Instead they would wait and be placed on the November ballot. The rationale is that initiatives should be on the ballot that draws all voters to the polls. Democrats believe that the June 2012 primary ballot in California will have low turnout from Democrats, but high turnout from Republicans, because the Republican presidential primary will theoretically be exciting but the Democratic presidential primary will not be exciting. Therefore, the voters who show up in June would be skewed.
The June 2012 primary will also contain U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and legislature, but again, in 2012, the U.S. Senate race is likely to be more exciting for Republican voters than for Democratic voters, because incumbent U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein is running for re-election and no Democrat with any support is expected to enter the race against her.
California currently is the only state, or almost the only state, that ever permits statewide initiatives to appear on a primary ballot.
On August 29, the California Assembly passed SB 205 by a vote of 49-27. It makes it illegal for voter registration workers to be paid on a per-card basis. This bill is especially damaging to new and minor parties, because as a result of Proposition 14, the only method for parties to obtain qualified status, or to keep it, is to have registration equal to 1% of the last gubernatorial vote. That requires 103,004 registrations now, and that number will probably be higher after November 2014.
The bill now goes to Governor Jerry Brown. Assuming he signs it, it will go into effect on January 1, 2012. The bill passed on a party-line vote, with no Democrats opposing it, and no Republicans supporting it. However, three Democrats didn’t vote.
On August 30, Tucson, Arizona, held partisan primaries for Mayor and other city office. No one had filed to be on the Republican ballot for Mayor, but a write-in candidate polled enough votes to be nominated. The only party with at least two candidates on the ballot for Mayor was the Green Party. See this story. The November 8, 2011, mayoral general election will be between a Democrat, a Republican, and a Green.
