According to this article, the town of Tar Heel, North Carolina, will elect its Mayor and three town commissioners entirely by write-in vote this year. The filing deadline has passed, and no one filed to be on the ballot for any of the offices. This type of election is fairly common in Pennsylvania and Indiana, but it is rare in North Carolina.
On July 17, Jim Beam, who has been covering Louisiana politics and government for 40 years, wrote a column criticizing Governor Bobby Jindal for vetoing the bill that lets independent candidates use the label “independent”.
On July 15, Maryland elections officials announced that a statewide referendum had qualified for the 2012 ballot. Maryland does not have the statewide initiative process, but it does have procedures for statewide referendums. Proponents need a petition signed by 3% of the registered voters.
The particular referendum that qualified asks the voters if they wish to repeal the “Dream Act”, which lets long-time residents of Maryland receive the in-state tuition rate even if they are illegal aliens. This is the first statewide referendum to qualify in Maryland in 20 years. Proponents make extensive use of the internet. No one could sign the petition electronically, but individuals could download the petition form and circulate it. Thirty percent of all the signatures on the petition were gathered that way.
On July 13, the Socialist Workers Party submitted 7,080 signatures to place its nominee for U.S. House on the ballot in New York’s special election set for September 13. No other group or independent candidate submitted a petition. The law requires 3,500 for independent candidates, or the nominees of unqualified parties, for U.S. House, and the law does not reduce this number when the petitioning period is short (as it almost always is, in special elections).
The SWP collected these signatures in only four days. The only other candidates on the ballot will be the Democrat and the Republican, unless the Green Party exercises its right to nominate someone without a petition (the Green Party is a qualified party in New York, so it has this option).
On July 14, the California Assembly passed SB 168, which prohibits paying people to circulate initiative, referendum and recall petitions on a per-signature basis. Similar laws in five other states have been declared unconstitutional. No Republican voted for the bill, and two Democrats voted against it. Now the bill goes to the Governor.
SB 205, a bill to outlaw paying voter registration workers on a per-registration basis, has a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on August 17.
