Nebraska and Maine are the only states that let each U.S. House district elect its own presidential elector. In 2008, Barack Obama carried the Nebraska district that is based in Omaha. A bill to re-establish electing all presidential electors statewide, LB 777, has a hearing on Wednesday, February 24, in the Senate Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.
On February 18, four Georgia Representatives introduced HB 1257. It abolishes mandatory ballot access petitions for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties. Georgia has always required independent and minor party candidates to pay the same large filing fees that Democrats and Republicans pay to run in primaries. So, this bill, if enacted, would not be impractical. The filing fees would still keep the ballot uncrowded.
The sponsors are: Alan Powell (D-Hartwell), E. Culver “Rusty” Kidd (Independent-Milledgeville), Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross), and Tom McCall (R-Elberton).
One possible problem with the bill relates to independent presidential candidates. Georgia has no filing fee for presidential candidates, so the bill, as written, would permit any independent presidential candidate to get on the November ballot with neither a petition nor a filing fee.
It is entirely fitting that this bill should be co-authored by Representative Kidd. His father, Culver Kidd, was a State Senator for 50 years, and he was the author of the last ballot access reform bill in Georgia, which passed in 1986. That 1986 bill lowered the statewide petitions to 1% of the number of registered voters. That is still a very difficult hurdle, but it is better than the law which existed before 1986.
The younger Kidd was elected to the Georgia House on December 1, 2009, in a special election, as an independent candidate.
The other two pending ballot access bills are SB 359 and HB 1141. Thanks to Jason Pye for this news.
Illinois Representative Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago) has introduced HB 6214. It significantly cuts the number of signatures needed by independent candidates, but it makes their petition deadlines worse.
Existing law requires independent candidate petitions to be submitted by late June of an election year. Statewide independents need 25,000 signatures. District and county independents need signatures of 5% of the last vote cast. The bill lowers the number of signatures to the same number of signatures needed by candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot, so that would be 5,000 signatures for statewide office, and approximately 600 signatures for U.S. House.
Unfortunately, the bill changes the deadline to 75 days after the primary, which would be mid-April. That deadline would be unconstitutional for presidential independents.
Both houses of the South Carolina legislature have now passed bills that make it more difficult for independent candidates to get on the ballot. However, the versions in each house are significantly different.
The House bill, HB 3746, is worse. It does not reduce the number of signatures, and it imposes three crippling restrictions: (1) no one could sign who had voted in the primary, or who will vote in a future primary that year; (2) newly-registered voters could not sign; (3) no one could sign for two independent candidates running for the same office.
The Senate bill, SB 590, is the same as the House bill, except it at least reduces the number of signatures. Statewide and U.S. House petitions would go from 10,000 signatures to 4,000 signatures; legislative candidates would go from 5% of the number of registered voters, to 3%. The Senate bill passed the Senate on February 3.
The part of the bills that says newly-registered voters cannot sign would be unconstitutional, under a U.S. Supreme Court summary affirmance from 1970, Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller. The primary screenout would almost surely be unconstitutional if the number of signatures is not reduced. Even with no primary screenout, no independent candidate for either house of Congress has ever qualified for a government-printed ballot in South Carolina. In Storer v Brown, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a 5% (of the last vote cast) petition, combined with a primary screenout, is probably unconstitutional, and the way to settle the matter is to see how often any candidate has been able to get on the ballot.
West Virginia lists parties on the ballot in order of how well they did for President in the last presidential election. Republicans have carried West Virginia in each of the last three presidential elections, so Republicans in recent years have had the top spot on the ballot. Ten Democratic Representatives have recently introduced HB 4137, which says parties should be on the ballot in order of how many registered voters they have. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans almost 2:1 in West Virginia.
A better bill would provide for either rotation, or random selection.
