North Carolina Senate Adjourns Without Passing Ballot Access Reform

Posted on by June 18, 2011
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On June 17, the North Carolina Senate went home for the year. The ballot access improvement bill, HB 32, which had passed the House earlier this month, never received a vote in the Senate. However, there will be a special session in July 2011, and election law bills are apparently on the agenda. And even if the bill doesn’t pass this year, North Carolina has two-year legislative sessions and the bill will be alive in 2012. Of course, the bill needs to pass in 2011 if it is to be in effect in time for the 2012 election, unless it passes very early in 2012.

The North Carolina House is still in session on Saturday, June 18. It will probably adjourn for the year later on that day.

American Third Position Qualifies for 2011 Special Election for West Virginia Governor

Posted on by June 18, 2011
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West Virginia will be holding a special gubernatorial election on October 4, 2011, to elect a Governor. Five candidates will appear. Besides the Democratic and Republican nominees, two minor party candidates, and one independent, qualified. The two minor party candidates are the Mountain Party’s Bob Henry Baber, and Harry Bertram, nominee of the American Third Position Party. The independent candidate is Marla Ingels.

Bertram and Ingels qualified by petition, but the Mountain Party (the West Virginia affiliate of the Green Party) did not need to petition, because it is has been a ballot-qualified party since 2000. The Mountain Party chose its gubernatorial nominee by convention.

The American Third Position Party believes that government policy in the United States discriminates against whites, and that whites need their own political party to fight this discrimination. Harry Bertram, in the past, has been a nominee for public office of parties that no longer exist, but which had a similar point of view. In 1984 he was a National States Rights Party nominee for a seat in the Ohio legislature (although he ran in a Democratic primary because the NSRP wasn’t on the ballot). In 1989 he was a National States Rights Party nominee for a township office in Ohio. In 1994 he was a Populist Party nominee for the West Virginia legislature, but in 1994 he was not able to surmount the petition requirement.

Nevada Governor Signs Bill that Injures Ballot Access

Posted on by June 17, 2011
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On June 17, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed AB 81, one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills. Among other things, it moves the petition deadline for new parties from May to April. In 1986 a U.S. District Court in Nevada declared that state’s former April petition deadline for new party petitions to be unconstitutional.

The bill also deletes the easy method for new parties to get on the ballot. The old Nevada law gave unqualified parties a choice: they could either submit a petition of 1% of the last vote (7,013 signatures), to become ballot-qualified; or they could submit candidate petitions, which only required 250 signatures for statewide office and 100 for U.S. House and other district and county office. Party labels were permitted for both methods. However, the latter procedure is now repealed. The latter procedure never did apply to presidential candidates, but it did apply to all other partisan office.