The Democratic Change Commission, a body set up by the Democratic National Committee, is meeting in Washington, D.C., this weekend to continue discussing how to improve the party’s procedures for choosing a presidential candidate. See this story. Mark Brewer of the Michigan Democratic Party continues to be the leader of those who disagree with the idea that any particular state should continue to have a permanent privileged position on the calendar.
New Hampshire Representative Joel Winters (D-Manchester) has introduced a bill to make it easier for unqualified political parties to get on the ballot. Existing law requires a group that wishes to be a qualified party to submit a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, which would be 20,394 valid signatures for 2010. This procedure has existed since 1996, but it is so difficult, it was only used once, in 2000, and back then it only required 9,827 valid signatures.
Winters’ bill would lower the petition to exactly 3,000 signatures. It happens that 3,000 is the existing petition requirement for statewide independent candidates. Even that petition is tough. For example, the Green Party has never placed a statewide candidate on the ballot in New Hampshire in its entire history, except in 2000.
Currently, New Hampshire is the only New England state with no ballot-qualified parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Massachusetts has three ballot-qualified parties, Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian. Massachusetts is holding a special primary for U.S. Senate on December 8, 2009. No one qualified for the Libertarian Party primary, but election officials were forced by state law to print up Libertarian Party primary ballots anyway. See this story.
In theory, Libertarian registrants, and independents (who are permitted to choose the Libertarian primary ballot) could write-in someone. But, state law says no one can be nominated at a primary unless he or she polls a number of write-ins equal to 10% of the party’s registration (or, alternatively, a number of write-ins equal to the number of signatures needed to get on the primary ballot, whichever is less). Thus, anyone who wanted the Libertarian nomination would need approximately 1,300 write-ins. UPDATE: the original post contains an error. The part of the law letting Libertarians nominate someone by write-in vote is worse than originally described. Anyone winning the Libertarian nomination would have needed 10,000 write-ins.
No Libertarian qualified to get on the Libertarian primary ballot because that would have taken 10,000 signatures, and only registered Libertarians, and registered independents, may sign. Instead, a Libertarian Party dues-paying member who is a registered independent, Joseph Kennedy, qualified as an independent candidate for the special general election, which will be on January 19, 2010. Kennedy needed 10,000 signatures to qualify for the January election, but any registered voter was free to sign.
Massachusetts does not require write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy, except for President. Therefore, in theory, any person who wanted the Libertarian nomination could have been conducting a write-in campaign beneath the radar of the Libertarian Party, and even beneath the radar of the media. However, it is very unlikely that anyone is actually doing this.
The Democratic primary ballot as four candidates, and the Republican primary ballot has two candidates.
Three election law bills in the U.S. House of Representatives have gained co-sponsors since November 24. HR3957, to require states to permit same-day voter registration in federal elections, has gained four new co-sponsors and now has fourteen.
HR1826, for public funding for congressional elections, has gained two and now has 119 co-sponsors.
HR3025, to require states to use bipartisan redistricting commissions for U.S. House, has gained one and now has 24 co-sponsors.
On December 4, the California Secretary of State certified vote-counting equipment that is already being used in Alameda County, California, for the purpose of letting the city of Oakland use Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections. See this story. The voters of Oakland voted to use IRV in 2006, so they have been waiting a long time. There will now be only one round of city elections in Oakland, to be held in November 2010.
Only charter cities in California may use IRV for their own elections. But, Oakland is a charter city.
