Illinois Lawsuit Over Vote-Counting Machines Will Test the Meaning of “Secret Ballot”

Posted on by November 29, 2009
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On November 20, the County Clerk of Champaign County, Illinois, filed a lawsuit in state court over an Illinois law that requires the county to use vote-counting machines that make an audible beep if a voter attempts to cast a vote that is blank for some offices. The case is Mark Shelden v Illinois State Board of Elections, in Champaign County Circuit Court.

The Illinois constitution requires that all voting be conducted in a way that “insures the secrecy of voting.” The Clerk says that the Constitution is being violated when a voter is forced to vote on a machine that tells everyone in the room if he or she chooses to leave certain offices blank. The Clerk says that there might be poll watchers in the room at the time, and the voter may be intimidated if that voter owes certain favors to people in one of the political parties, or someone in government, and it becomes known that the voter chose to leave some offices blank. See this story. Thanks to Richard Smolka of Election Administration Reports for this story.

In 1964, in Connecticut, a similar controversy arose over secrecy in voting and the use of particular voting machines. Viviam Kellems was upset about Connecticut mechanical voting machines. When a voter used the machine’s straight-ticket device, the machine made a bell-like sound. Kellems insisted that a voter should be able to decide whether to use the straight-ticket device or not without having people outside know. Instead of resorting to the courts, she carried out a sit-in in the voting booth. Elections officials had known what she was going to do, and they had an extra polling place, and let her carry on her sit-in all day. She eventually won the fight, when election officials finally eliminated the Connecticut straight-ticket device.

If the U.S. Supreme Court accepts Doe v Reed, the case from Washington state over secrecy of names and addresses on petitions, there will be a new interest in exactly why all states use a secret ballot, and what “secret ballot” really means.

Minor Party and Independent Candidates Are Involved in Constitutional Election Law Cases in At Least 21 States

Posted on by November 28, 2009
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Minor party and independent candidates are in at least 26 courts, in cases that challenge the constitutionality of various state election laws. A few new cases will probably be filed in December.

The issues in each state are:

1. Alabama: whether the state may require more signatures for an independent candidate for U.S. House than are required for an independent presidential candidate.
2. Arizona: whether the state may ban out-of-state circulators for petitions to put political parties on the ballot.
3. Arkansas: whether the state may remove a party from its position on the ballot because it failed to perform well for President, even though it performed very well for other office and elected a state legislator.
4. Colorado: whether a state may tell someone that she can’t be an independent candidate on the grounds that she was a member of a qualified party in the year before filing.
5. Connecticut: whether a state may give public funding to Democratic and Republican candidates with no petition needed, but require an independent candidate to collect signatures of 20% of the last vote cast to get equal public funding.
6. District of Columbia: whether the District must count the write-in candidates for president of declared write-in presidential candidates.
7. Georgia: whether the state may have procedures for independent candidates for U.S. House that are so difficult, they have not been used since 1964.
8. Hawaii: whether the state may require six times more signatures for an independent presidential candidate than for an entire new party with its own primary.
9. Idaho: whether the state may ban out-of-state circulators.
10. Louisiana: whether the state should have accepted presidential elector paperwork from a ballot-qualified party in 2008 by September 12.
11. Massachusetts: whether the state must let unqualified parties use a stand-in presidential candidate on its petition.
12. Montana: whether the state may require a candidate for office other than president to submit his or her petition by mid-March of an election year.
13. New Hampshire: whether the state must let unqualified parties use a stand-in presidential candidate on its petition.
14. New Jersey: whether the state can confine all non-Republican, non-Democratic candidates into a space on the ballot that is labeled “nomination by petition”.
15. New Mexico: whether the state may require a qualified party to submit separate petitions for all the candidates it has nominated via the convention process.
16. North Carolina: whether the state may require an independent candidate for U.S. House to submit 20,000 valid signatures, give the historical background that no independent has ever qualified for the government-printed ballot in that state. Another case on whether the state may require new or previously unqualified parties to submit approximately 85,000 valid signatures.
17. Pennsylvania: whether the state may force all parties to continually submit petitions for its nominees unless that party has registration membership of approximately 1,000,000 members; also whether the state can continue to enforce its petition deadline when the legislature has never enacted that deadline and the previous deadline was declared unconstitutional in 1984; also whether the state may threaten candidates with being charged for the expenses of disqualifying their petitions; also whether the state may continue to discard write-in votes without counting them.
18. Rhode Island: whether a city can limit voters to signing for only one candidate for the same office.
19. South Carolina: whether the state can disqualify a party’s nominee if that nominee, after obtaining one party’s nomination, tries to get another party’s nomination.
20. Tennessee: whether the state can require new or previously unqualified parties to submit a petition signed by 2.5% of the last vote for Governor, on a petition that says all the signers are members of that party.
21. Washington: whether the state can limit the general election ballot to the top-two vote-getters in the primary.

In addition to these lawsuits, a challenge is pending against a federal ruling that says individuals may not give more than $5,000 to a new political party that is not yet a “National Committee”. Also, cases involving petitioning for initiatives and referendums are pending in Maryland and Washington, and against the U.S. Postal Service regulation that bars petitioning on its sidewalks.

Rare Publicity for a State’s Loyalty Oath for Candidates

Posted on by November 27, 2009
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National Public Radio has this short article about the Illinois election law that asks candidates for office to sign a loyalty oath. All such oaths were held unconstitutional by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in 1974, but they remain on the books in six states, including populous states like California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. The California legislature repealed one of that state’s laws last year, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. It didn’t relate directly to elections, but rather to employment in public school systems.

North Carolinan Hopes to Be First Independent Candidate on Ballot for U.S. House

Posted on by November 27, 2009
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North Carolina has had government-printed ballots ever since 1901, and no independent candidate for either House of Congress has ever appeared on such a ballot. Independent candidates for U.S. House need signatures of 4% of the number of registered voters, which is as much as 20,000 in some districts. Here is a story about Brad Smith, who is attempting to obtain the needed 17,000 valid signatures to run in the 5th district in 2010. Here is his web page.

A lawsuit is currently pending against the independent requirement for U.S. House, called Greene v Bartlett, 5:08-cv-0088, U.S. District Court, western district. It was filed in 2008 and hasn’t had oral arguments yet. It is moving slowly because the attorney for the plaintiff, Law Professor Bob Bastress, is on a special assignment to redraft West Virginia sentencing laws, which is occupying all of his time. But he will be back working on the case next month.