Utah Representative Craig Frank, a Republican, was re-elected in November 2010, but afterwards he himself discovered that he lives slightly outside his district. On January 19, the Republican caucus in the legislature decided not to immediately pass a bill that makes a slight boundary adjustment so as to save Franks’ ability to qualify. See this story.
On January 20, the leadership of the House of Representatives said there will be a floor vote on January 26 on whether to abolish the public funding program for presidential candidates. See this story. The House leadership says it will bring bills to the floor every week to abolish some particular type of federal spending, and this is the first one in the series. There is apparently no bill introduced yet to take this action, and no committee hearings are expected. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
The public funding program has been in place ever since 1976. It provides nondiscriminatory public funding in the primary season to any presidential candidate, seeking the nomination of any party (no matter how small), if that candidate raises at least $5,000 from each of 20 states. It also provides general election funding to the presidential campaigns of parties that polled at least 5% of the vote in the previous presidential election. If any new party, or any independent presidential candidate, polls 5% or more, then that campaign gets general election funding after the election is over. The only general election funding received by candidates and parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties has been after the 1980 election, for John Anderson; and for the Reform Party, after the 1996 election and before the 2000 general election.
On January 18, this brief was filed in Greene v Bartlett, 10-2068. This is the case that challenges the North Carolina ballot access law for independent candidates. No independent candidate for U.S. House has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot, and North Carolina has had government-printed ballots since 1901.
The state’s brief emphasizes that in 2010, an independent candidate did appear to qualify for U.S. House. He was Wendell Fant, and his petition was financed and supported by the Service Employees International Union. But he did not appear on the ballot because he didn’t accept the nomination. The reply brief points out that the Fant petition drive occurred after all the evidence in this lawsuit had been filed, and says that if the 4th circuit believes that the success of the Fant petition is key to the case, then the 4th circuit ought to remand the case back to U.S. District Court so more evidence about the Fant petition can be put in the record. It is plausible that the Fant petition cost the backers as much as $100,000.
Chicago has non-partisan elections, and requires 12,500 signatures for anyone running for citywide office to get on the February 22, 2011 ballot. Only two candidates submitted petitions to run for Treasurer, the incumbent, Stephanie D. Neely, and a challenger, Elida M. Cruz. The petitions for Cruz were challenged successfully, so Cruz is off the ballot. The ballot will carry only one candidate for Treasurer. See this story.
The Pennsylvania Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation is still not finished compiling the tally of write-in votes cast in the November 2010 election for federal and state office, but it says that it will soon finish. All write-ins in Pennsylvania are valid votes, because the state has no law requiring write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. The state generally won’t furnish a write-in tally for write-in candidates, however. It furnished one for Ralph Nader for president in November 1996, and again for Ralph Nader in November 2004. It furnished one for Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin in 2008, but it arbitrarily did not furnish one for Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney the same year.
All minor party and independent candidates for statewide office who tried to get on the Pennsylvania ballot in 2010 were kept off the ballot by challenges or threats of challenges, so all of them asked that their write-ins be tallied. Pennsylvania was one of only 5 states in 2010 that had statewide elections, but which had only Democrats and Republicans on the statewide ballot. The others were Alabama, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Washington.
