Micah Sifry has this article on CNN, explaining that only President Obama’s campaign has fully utilized modern technology for managing and assimilating data about tens of millions of individual voters and their preferences and demographic characteristics. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Indiana has one of the most severe laws for candidates to get on a presidential primary ballot. The law requires 500 signatures from each of the state’s nine U.S. House districts. In 2008, the only Democrats who appeared on the Indiana Democratic presidential primary ballot were Hillary Clinton (who won the state’s primary) and Barack Obama.
The October 8 issues of both the South Bend Tribune and the Howey Politics Weekly are reporting that it appears the Second District petitions for both Clinton and Obama contained many forgeries, so many that it is likely the statewide petitions would have failed if the problems had been brought to light at the time. Although each candidate probably still had the needed 4,500 signatures statewide, the distribution requirement would likely not have been met. Here is the South Bend Tribune story.
Four Republicans qualified for the Indiana presidential primary in 2008: John McCain, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee.
Indiana elections officials do not actually check the names on presidential primary petitions. They merely look at the petitions to see if they appear proper on their face. Thanks to Ryan Nees for this story.
As noted earlier, on October 7, the Ohio legislature asked to intervene in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, the ballot access case. Here is the state legislature’s brief, asking the U.S. District Court to let it intervene so that it may appeal the Libertarian Party’s September 7 victory. The legislature says it wants to intervene because the Secretary of State is not appealing.
Here is the Libertarian Party’s response, filed on October 8. The party argues that the U.S. District Court should not permit the legislature to intervene, mostly because the legislature waited an entire month after the party won injunctive relief. As the party’s brief notes, the Ohio Secretary of State had told the press on September 8 that he was not appealing. The party says it wouldn’t be fair to let the legislature intervene now, because the deadline for individual Libertarians to petition onto the Libertarian primary ballot is December 7, 2011. Anyone running in the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate, or for President, needs 1,000 signatures. Presidential primary candidates cannot begin to petition until they have chosen a slate of delegates.
On October 7, Ontario held an election for its provincial legislative body. See this story for the results. The Liberal Party won 53 seats, the Conservative Party 37 seats, and the New Democratic Party 17 seats.
Previously, the Liberals had held 70 seats, Conservatives 25, New Democrats 10, and 2 vacancies. Thanks to Sam Harley for the link.
The October 8 Denver Post has this editorial, praising a lower state court for refusing to stop Denver from sending mail ballots to inactive voters, and making suggestions for policy changes.
