Louisiana Secretary of State Webpage Adds Information About Partisan Affiliation of Certain Candidates

Posted on by December 8, 2009
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Louisiana, and approximately half the remaining states, will not let a candidate who qualifies under the independent candidate procedures list his or her party label on the ballot (except that Louisiana does permit labels for presidential candidates). In other words, the only party labels that ever appear on the Louisiana ballot (except for President) are the names of qualified parties. The ballot-qualified parties are Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Reform.

However, the Louisiana Secretary of State’s webpage recently started identifying the partisan registration of candidates who are not members of qualified parties. It has long been the policy that the state prints the word “Independent” on the ballot for candidates who are registered independents, and prints nothing for candidates are registered as members of a party that is not qualified. But, the Secretary of State’s webpage has gone back to elections starting in 2005, and identified the actual partisan registration of these “Other” candidates of the past. This will be useful to historians.

For example, in the 2007 gubernatorial election, a candidate named Belinda Alexandrenko was on the ballot with no label. But the webpage now shows that she was registered in the “Hope for America” Party. This improvement in the information on the Secretary of State’s webpage seems to have been caused by Randall Hayes, a Louisiana resident who always wanted to know which party these mysterious candidates listed as “Other” were really members of.

Oklahoma Ballot Access Group “OBAR” Sets Meeting

Posted on by December 8, 2009
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The group that lobbies for better ballot access for minor parties in Oklahoma, and which lobbies for better ballot access for independent candidates for President as well, is OBAR, “Oklahoma Ballot Access Reform.” It meets at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 12, in Mazzio’s Restaurant in Stroud, Oklahoma. Plans will be set for lobbying for the ballot access bill, HB 1072. The bill passed both houses of the legislature last year, but wasn’t enacted because the version passed in one house didn’t match the version passed in the other house. Oklahoma has two-year legislative sessions so the bill is still alive.

North Carolina Supreme Court Seems Eager to Hear Ballot Access Case

Posted on by December 8, 2009
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The North Carolina Supreme Court will soon be hearing Libertarian Party of North Carolina v State Board of Elections, a challenge to the state’s ballot access laws for minor parties, and also a challenge to other laws that injure minor parties. The Green Party is a co-plaintiff.

The Court wants all amicus curiae briefs in by December 23, 2009. There are many groups that intend to file on the side of the minor parties, although they are wishing the Court would give them a little more time. For a list of the groups that want to participate, see this story by Brian Irving.

Author of California “Top-Two” Denies that Measure Will Injure Minor Parties

Posted on by December 8, 2009
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California State Senator Abel Maldonado, the author of the bill for a “top-two open primary”, is touring California, speaking to newspapers. The chief purpose of his travels around the state is to win newspaper support and publicity for his own bid to become California’s Lieutenant Governor. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has chosen Maldonado to fill the vacancy in that job. However, Maldonado cannot take the Lieutenant Governorship post unless both houses of the legislature vote to confirm him.

As Maldonado travels the state, the newspapers always mention that he is the author of the “top-two open primary” measure that the legislature put on the June 2010 ballot. For the first time, one of the newspaper stories about that measure has mentioned the charge that the measure injures minor parties. The San Luis Obispo Tribune, to its credit, asked Maldonado about this. See this story. It says, “Maldonado strongly denied that the two-tier election system he has proposed would undermine third parties like the Libertarian and Green Parties.”

It is quite possible that Senator Maldonado doesn’t even realize that his measure makes it substantially more difficult for a ballot-qualified party to remain on the ballot. No newspaper story has mentioned that aspect of the plan. Existing law says a ballot-qualified party is one that polled at least 2% of the vote for any of the 7 or 8 statewide races on the ballot in a midterm year (parties get a free ride in presidential election years). This is a fairly easy test. But under Maldonado’s proposal, no party would have nominees in midterm years. Therefore, the only way parties can remain on the ballot is by having registration of approximately 100,000 members, something that neither the Libertarian Party, nor the Peace and Freedom Party, now have.

It is also quite possible that Senator Maldonado doesn’t even know that his measure says that write-ins could never be counted, for Congress and state office, in November. The irony is that both the write-in restriction, and the increased difficulty for parties to remain ballot-qualified, were completely unnecessary for the “top-two” measure. Neither of these characteristics was in Prop. 62, the earlier “top-two” measure, that was defeated by the voters in November 2004.

Washington State Files Brief With U.S. Supreme Court, Asking Court Not To Hear Case on Making Petition Signatures Public

Posted on by December 8, 2009
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On December 7, Washington state filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Doe v Reed, 09-559, asking the Court not to hear the case. The issue is whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be made public. The Court will consider whether to hear the case at its conference on January 8, 2010.

The state’s brief says that the state interest in releasing the names and addresses is to let people review the work of the Secretary of State. In other words, if the Secretary of State says the petition has enough valid signatures, opponents of the petition might wish to contest the Secretary of State’s finding.

The brief also says that the signatures aren’t really private anyway, since if they are circulated in public (for instance, on the street) anyway can see who signed the sheet that is on display.

Finally, the brief says that if the petition’s opponents can’t learn who signed, that wouldn’t be fair, because the proponents of the petition are permitted to see who signed. The brief mentions that in California, the names and addresses of petition signers are not public information, and that even the proponents of a petition are not permitted to see their own petition, after it has been submitted. So, at least California is symmetrical, and denies the information to both sides.