According to this story, New Mexico’s Director of the Election Bureau, who recently resigned, has said that one reason he resigned was that the Secretary of State was requiring patronage employees to help with her ballot access petition. New Mexico is one of a minority of states in which Democrats and Republicans must petition in order to get on their own party’s primary ballot. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The election for California Secretary of State has three well-known election law activists this year, although the type of election law activism each has engaged in are very different from each other.
Christina Tobin is the only candidate seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. Here is her web page. She is the founder of Free and Equal, which has become a major source of financial backing for efforts to improve ballot access laws and other election laws. For example, Free and Equal has made important contributions to the Oklahoma lobbying effort for better ballot access. Tobin also has her own paid petitioning company. She served as Ralph Nader’s ballot access petition coordinator in 2008, a year in which every single Nader petition that was attempted, was successful (Nader was on in 45 states in 2008, more than at any other year in which he ran). She was responsible for arranging the only minor party/independent presidential debate in 2008 that was televised. That debate was between Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin and was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. She also sponsored the only vice-presidential debate for minor party and independent candidates of 2008, at which Wayne A. Root, Matt Gonzalez, and Darrell Castle participated, in Las Vegas.
Free and Equal also sponsored two Illinois primary gubernatorial debates in the 2010 campaign season.
The Democratic incumbent, Debra Bowen, is running for re-election. During her first term, she was active in changing California law and policy in regard to electronic vote-counting machines. All California vote-counting machines now have a paper trail. Before she was Secretary of State, she was a state legislator, and she is responsible for making California the first state to have all pending bills in the state legislature on a state web page. Here is her campaign web page.
Another well-known election law activist running for Secretary of State is Orly Taitz, who is running in the Republican primary. Here is her web page. She is the most famous of the various attorneys who have been filing lawsuits ever since 2008, alleging that President Barack Obama does not meet the constitutional qualifications to be President. Taitz lives in Orange County, California.
The only other candidate for Secretary of State who has an active campaign, so far, is Damon Dunn, who is seeking the Republican nomination. He was a football player for Stanford while in college, and he has been active in the real estate business, but he has never engaged in any activity to alter or reform any aspect of election administration or election law. However, he has been endorsed by many California Republican Party office-holders. Here is his web page.
In Mississippi, all qualified parties nominate by primary. However, a primary is not actually held for parties with no primary contests. Because the ballot-qualified minor parties in Mississippi never have contests in their primaries, they in effect have already nominated for 2010. Primary date in Mississippi in 2010 is June 1.
The Reform Party has U.S. House nominees in all four Mississippi districts. The Libertarian Party has nominees in two districts, and the Constitution Party has one nominee. See this story.
U.S. House is the only partisan office up in Mississippi this year. There is no U.S. Senate race up, and state elections are held in the odd years before presidential election years, i.e, 2011. Thanks to Steve Rankin for the link.
The Libertarian/Green Party brief in the North Carolina Supreme Court, in the ballot access case, has been filed. Here is the 36-page brief. The basic message is that North Carolina has no state interest in requiring so many signatures for a new or previously unqualified party to get on the ballot. North Carolina requires more signatures than any other state except California. The brief also attacks other characteristics of the law, such as the ban on letting voters register into unqualified parties, and the inability of a party that is not qualified statewide to get on in just part of the state.
Here is the amicus brief of nine organizations in support of the case. This brief is well worth using for activists in any state with severe ballot access laws. It explains how society is better off when minor parties and independent candidates are able to get on the ballot. It is filed by: the Southern Coalition for Social Justice; Democracy North Carolina; FairVote Action; the North Carolina League of Women Voters; Common Cause of North Carolina; North Carolinians for Free & Proper Elections; the John Locke Foundation; the North Carolina NAACP; and the North Carolina Center for Voter Education. The text is 14 pages long, but the link also includes the Motion asking the Court to let this amicus brief be filed. Thanks to Sean Haugh for these briefs.
On March 3, the Utah legislature sent SB 275 to the Governor. It makes it easier for people who signed an initiative or referendum to remove their signatures. The bill goes into effect the moment the Governor signs it into law.
An initiative petition is currently circulating in Utah, to toughen ethics standards for state legislators. See this op-ed by John W. Milliken in the Salt Lake Tribune. Milliken identifies the motivation for SB 275 as a desire to stop that particular initiative. There are court precedents that hold that it violates due process to make ballot access more difficult in the middle of any particular petition drive.
