The Illinois Constitution Party has a hearing on Tuesday, September 7, in a state court in Chicago, over whether its statewide petition has enough valid signatures. Thanks to Howard Wilson for this news.
The Constitution Party invites anyone who is interested to participate in a conference call on the evening of September 7, to discuss what happened. The call is at 8 p.m. central time. The call-in number is 712-432-3030, access code 349915.
The New York Times has this story about the Green Party of Arizona, and how a former Republican state legislator recruited candidates to run in its primary, even though the candidates have no connection with the party.
If state election laws would let small qualified parties nominate by convention, this problem would not exist.
The reason it is so easy for write-in candidates to be nominated in the primaries of newly-qualifying parties in Arizona is because the Socialist Workers Party won a lawsuit in 1980. The SWP had complained about the number of signatures needed to place a member of the party on the SWP’s primary ballot. The U.S. District Court Judge upheld the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on the primary ballot (even though the SWP had so few registered members, it was impossible for anyone to get on its primary ballot), but struck down the companion law that required a minimum number of write-ins for anyone to win the primary of a newly-qualifying party. One write-in is sufficient, if the write-in candidate has more votes than anyone else running for the same nomination.
Write-ins are not counted in Arizona unless the write-in candidate files a write-in declaration of candidacy. If the Green Party had known that these candidates would be filing declarations of candidacy, the party could have recruited bona fide Greens to also file write-in declarations of candidacy, and the bona fide Greens certainly would have received more write-ins than the candidates recruited by the Republicans. But, the Green Party had no means of knowing what was about to happen, and by the time they knew, it was too late.
Caffeinated Thoughts, an Iowa blog that looks at culture and politics from an evangelical reformed point of view, recently called for a four-candidate Iowa gubernatorial debate, instead of the Democratic-Republican debates that are already being planned. See the post here. It recommends that the Libertarian Party and the Iowa Party gubernatorial candidates be included. Iowa has a recent tradition of excluding minor party candidates from gubernatorial and U.S. Senate debates. Green Party and Libertarian Party candidates for Governor were not able to debate their major party opponents in either 2006 nor 2002.
The November 2010 gubernatorial ballot will feature six candidates: Democratic incumbent Chet Culver, Republican nominee and former Governor Terry Branstad, Jonathan Narcisse of the Iowa Party, Eric Cooper of the Libertarian Party, David Rosenfeld of the Socialist Workers Party, and independent candidate Gregory Hughes.
The Iowa Party was formed by Jonathan Narcisse, a former member of the Des Moines School Board. It emphasizes education and seems to be a blend of conservative and liberal positions on other issues. Narcisse, who is black, was originally planning on running in the Democratic primary this year, but changed his mind and formed his own party. The Iowa Party also has a candidate for the state legislature.
The independent gubernatorial candidate, Gregory Hughes, seems to stress problems with domestic relations courts, and is a founder of IowaFathers. The Iowa Green Party has no nominees for statewide office this year, but has a candidate for the state legislature.
The September 6 issue of the Washington Post has this editorial, criticizing Maryland’s hyper-technical rule for determining whether signatures on petitions are invalid. The constitutionality of the rules has been in both federal court and state court since last year. The federal case is pending in the 4th circuit and is Kendall v Howard County, 09-2304. The state court case is Norman v Howard County. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
In 2010, there are at least twelve states, plus the District of Columbia, that have held contested primaries for minor parties:
Arizona had a 4-way gubernatorial primary for the Libertarian Party; California held contested primaries for all four of its ballot-qualified minor parties; Colorado held statewide Libertarian primaries; the District of Columbia is about to hold contested primaries for the Statehood Green Party; Florida held a contested state legislative primary for the Libertarian Party; the Illinois Green Party primary had a few contests for district office; Louisiana held a U.S. Senate primary for the Libertarian Party; the Maine Green Party had two contested legislative races; Minnesota had a contested gubernatorial primary for the Independence Party; Missouri had a contested Libertarian primary for several offices, including U.S. Senate; New York is about to hold a contested gubernatorial primary for the Conservative Party; Ohio had a few contested district office Libertarian primaries; and Vermont had several statewide contested Liberty Union primaries. Thanks to the posters below for help with this blog post.
This is believed to be the highest number of states that have held contested minor party primaries in a midterm year since before World War II. States that have held contested minor party primaries (for office other than President) since World War II, but not this year, are Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Washington, and possibly others.
