Last week, Alabama voters elected Harri Anne Smith to the State Senate as an independent candidate.  She defeated her only opponent, a Republican, by a margin of 55.2%-44.8%.  She was the incumbent in the 29th district.  The Republican Party had refused to let her file in this year’s Republican primary, because she had endorsed a Democrat for Congress in 2008.  So, she ran as an independent, and became the first independent elected to the Alabama legislature since 1983.

As a result of the 2010 election, the Alabama legislature next year will have Republican majorities in both houses, for the first time since the 19th century.  In recent years, ballot access reform bills have been introduced by Republican legislators, and they have made little progress in legislative committees with Democratic committee chairs.

On November 6, independent candidate Bert Jones was elected to the North Carolina State House of Representatives.  He defeated an incumbent in a two-person race by a margin of 56.1% – 43.9%.  Jones is a dentist who was formerly a Republican, but who left the party because he did not believe the Republican Party is sincerely interested in reducing the size of government.  He was elected in the 65th district.

Jones is only the second person to be elected as an independent to the North Carolina state legislature, since the beginning of government-printed ballots in 1901.  In 1990, Carolyn Russell had also been elected as an independent, but she had run as an independent for technical reasons, and affiliated with the Republicans when the legislature had convened in 1991.

The Georgia ballot access lawsuit, Coffield v Kemp, now has a case number in the U.S. Supreme Court, 10-596.  The case challenges Georgia procedures for minor party or independent candidates for U.S. House to get on the ballot.  Those procedures have been in place since 1964, and they have never been used.  They require a petition of 5% of the number of registered voters.  The petition must be notarized.  The candidate must also pay a filing fee of 3% of the office’s annual salary, which must be paid several weeks before the petition itself is due.  The petition is due in July and cannot be circulated earlier than January of the election year.

The last time anyone successfully completed a 5% petition for U.S. House in Georgia was in 1964, but back in 1964, the signatures did not need to be notarized, the petition was not due until October, all signatures were deemed to be valid.  Also, in 1964 and earlier years, congressional boundaries in Georgia followed county lines.  One of the most difficult aspects of petitioning for U.S. House in Georgia is that in recent decades, the boundaries of the districts have been very complicated and irregular.  The few instances in which anyone tried to petition in Georgia for district office have invariably meant that even turning in twice as many signatures as the legal requirement does not mean success.  In 2002 the Libertarian Party tried very hard to qualify in one district, and turned in double the requirement, but was told that the petition lacked sufficient valid signatures.

Another reason petitioning is difficult in Georgia is that ordinary voters are not accustomed to being asked to sign petitions.  The state lacks procedures for initiative and referendum petitions, so Georgians never see those petitions.  Georgia candidates obtain a place on Republican and Democratic primary ballots by paying a filing fee, not by petitioning, so Georgia voters never see primary petitions either.  Because petitioning is such rare activity in Georgia, almost no commercial property owner is willing to allow petitioners on its property, and many voters are puzzled when they are asked to sign a ballot access petition.  Statewide candidate petitions in Georgia require 1%, not 5%, and even statewide petitions are very tough in Georgia.  No statewide petition has succeeded since 2000, when Pat Buchanan has general election public funding and was able to hire the job done.  In 2010, two statewide independent candidates tried and failed to get on the ballot.  One was Ray Boyd, who wanted to run for Governor; another was Brad Bryant, who wanted to run to keep his job as State Schools Superintendent.