According to this article, Donald Trump now says if he runs for President in 2012, he will only seek the Republican Party nomination. The article says he will not run as an independent or minor/new party candidate. Trump made his statement on April 16 in Boca Raton, Florida, while addressing a Tea Party meeting.
Louisiana Representative Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) has introduced HB 561, to require all candidates for President and Congress to submit birth certificates as a condition of appearing on the ballot. The provisions of the bill relating to candidates for Congress appear to violate the U.S. Constitution, Article I. They require candidates for Congress to certify that they are residents of Louisiana. However, Louisiana is in the 5th circuit, and the 5th circuit in 2006 ruled in Texas Democratic Party v Benkiser, 459 F.3d 582 (2006) that candidates for Congress are eligible whether they live in the state or not, at the time they file to run for office. The U.S. Constitution requires members of Congress to be residents of the state they represent “when elected”, not before. The Texas decision said that Tom DeLay was eligible to run for re-election in 2006, even though he had moved from Texas to Virginia. DeLay was hoping to be declared ineligible, because if he had been ineligible, the Republican Party would have been able to replace him as its nominee in the 22nd U.S. House district.
The U.S. Constitution does not bar naturalized citizens from serving in Congress.
The part of the Louisiana bill relating to presidential candidates seems flawed as well. The bill does not seem to acknowledge that not everyone has a birth certificate. By contrast, the bill on this subject that has already passed the Arizona legislature acknowledges this point, and has provision for alternate methods for proving one’s place of birth. The Louisiana bill requires either the national party or the state party to be responsible for submitting the birth certificate, although the birth certificate must be attached to an affidavit signed by the presidential candidate.
The Louisiana legislature convenes on April 25, and adjourns in late June. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the news of the Louisiana bill.
Joe Mathews, co-author of “California Crackup” and author of the leading biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, has this column in Fox and Hounds blog. The column praises the idea the electronic signatures on initiatives should be valid. Mathews rebuts the idea that this would lead to a glut of ballot measures appearing on the ballot. Mathews is an expert on the initiative process, and last year organized a national conference on the initiative process worldwide. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
On April 5, Detroit elected members of Citizens’ District Councils in non-partisan elections. The city has 19 districts for this office, and each district elects six members every year, for three year terms. Each council has 18 members.
Matt Erard, a leader of the Socialist Party, was elected this year in the Downtown District. The election was not suspenseful, because only five candidates’ names appeared on the ballot. Erard had been a Socialist Party nominee for Congress in 2010, but did not get on the ballot; and he had been on the ballot as a Green Party nominee for the legislature in 2008.
Since last year, the Socialist Party has been asking the Michigan Supreme Court to hear its ballot access lawsuit. The court still hasn’t said whether it will hear the case. The application has been pending in the court for twenty weeks. The party challenges the law that requires almost twice as many signatures for a new party to get on the ballot, compared to the number of votes an already-established party needs to remain on the ballot.
On April 14, the Texas Senate passed SB 100, by Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio). As amended, the bill leaves the Texas primary in early March. But it moves the runoff primary from the 2nd Tuesday in April, to the 4th Tuesday in May. The motivation for the bill is the federal law that requires overseas absentee ballots to be mailed no later than 45 days before any election. The existing system can’t cope with that requirement, because the existing system has too little time between the primary and the runoff primary.
The bill has some inadvertent effects on various deadlines for candidates. If this bill becomes law, the petition deadline for an independent candidate for any office except President will move from May 14 to June 21. That, of course, is helpful to independent candidates who are not running for President. But, oddly, the petition deadline for an independent presidential candidate would continue to be May 14. This is because, under the existing law and under the bill as well, the petition deadline for independent candidates for office other than President is tied to the date of the runoff primary. But the independent presidential petition is not. It is difficult to believe that any court would uphold the constitutionality of a state law that says independent presidential candidates must submit their petition (which requires 80,778 signatures) by May 14, yet the petition deadline for independent candidates for other statewide office (who need 49,799 signatures) would be 38 days later. The U.S. Supreme Court said in Anderson v Celebrezze said ballot access for presidential candidates who run outside the major parties must be easier than ballot access candidates for other office. If SB 100 passes, Texas will have that completely backwards.
SB 100 also moves the deadline for all non-presidential candidates to file a declaration of candidacy from January 2 of the election year, to the third Monday in December of the year before the election. This deadline even applies to independent candidates (but not presidential independent candidates). If this passes, Texas will be the only state in the nation that requires an independent candidate to file a declaration of candidacy in the odd year before an election year. The only other state that ever required an independent candidate for any office to file anything in the odd year before the election year had been Illinois, which had once required non-presidential independent candidates to file a petition in December of the year before the election. But that deadline was held unconstitutional in 2006 in Lee v Keith, 463 F.3d 763 (7th Circuit).
SB 100 passed the Senate on second reading and third reading on the same day. Normally the Constitution forbids bills to pass without at least one day between second reading and third reading, but a legislative chamber has the authority to waive that rule. Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) objected to passing the bill so speedily. He said if the normal rule were followed, the news of the bill passing second reading would give the public a chance to find any flaws in the bill before the bill passes third reading. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about HB 100.
