On November 2, 2010, North Carolina voters will use Instant Runoff Voting to choose a State Court of Appeals judge. This is a statewide, non-partisan office. See this story. This is probably the first time that any state has used Instant Runoff Voting for a statewide office in a general election. Many decades ago, a few southern states used IRV for statewide primaries.
A poll released on September 3 suggests that the Green Party has a fair chance to elect its first member of the Canadian Parliament. The poll, for the Saanich-Gulf Islands district just north of Victoria, British Columbia, shows: Gary Lunn, Conservative, 34%; Elizabeth May, Green Party, 32%; Renee Hetherington, Liberal, 17%; Edith Loring-Kohanga, New Democratic, 17%. See this story. The Canadian Green Party has never before elected anyone to Parliament. The date of the election is not set yet, but it will be this year.
On September 3, U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Erickson, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld a North Dakota law that requires candidates in a partisan primary, running for the legislature, to not only place first, but to poll at least 130 to 150 votes. Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger, 3:10-cv-64. Here is the 13-page decision.
North Dakota has very small legislative districts. One of the plaintiffs, Richard Ames, ran in a district (the 25th) which had only 1,033 votes cast in the June 2010 primary for all three ballot-qualified parties, for State Senate. In order to advance to the November ballot, he would have needed 142 voters to choose to vote in the Libertarian Party primary ballot, which is almost 14% of all the voters who came out to vote in the primaries that day.
The minimum vote test for statewide office is 300 votes, and the statewide Libertarian candidates this year all met that minimum vote test. North Dakota has 47 legislative districts, so whereas a candidate needs an average of 6 votes per legislative district for statewide office, the legislative requirement is approximately 25 times that number. That is why no minor party has been able to run any candidates for the North Dakota legislature since 1976.
The decision says that the North Dakota law is constitutional, because in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court in Munro v Socialist Workers Party upheld a similar law in Washington state. But the Washington state law only required the candidate to poll 1% of the total vote cast in his or her race, which is wildly different from 14%. Furthermore, in the Washington state case, the state used a blanket primary, and a voter could vote for a minor party or independent candidate in the primary in one race, and vote for various major party candidates in other races. That is not true in North Dakota, where the voter must choose one party’s primary ballot.
All four of the Mississippi Reform Party’s candidates for U.S. House have been removed from the November 2010 ballot by the Secretary of State. The Reform Party is ballot-qualified in Mississippi. However, the party’s current state officers had not been registered with the Secretary of State. Although the paperwork problem has now been rectified, the certification of the nominees in this year’s election was held to be invalid.
The candidates had been: Barbara Dale in District One, Ashley Norwood in District Two, Tracella Hill in District Three, and Anna Jewel Revies in District Four.
Mississippi has no U.S. Senate election this year, nor any state office elections either. Mississippi elects all its state officers in the odd years before presidential election years.
A Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll released September 2 shows these results for the U.S. Senate race in Illinois: Democrat Alexi Giannoullas 34%, Republican Mark Kirk 34%, Green Party nominee LeAlan Jones 6%, Libertarian Party nominee Mike Labno 3%, undecided 23%.
The previous best showing for U.S. Senate for the Illinois Green Party was in 2008, when Kathleen Cummings polled 2.24%. The previous best showing for that office for the Illinois Libertarian Party was in 2004, when Jerry Kohn received 1.35%. No U.S. Senate candidate, other than a Democrat or a Republican, has polled as much as 5% for U.S. Senate in Illinois since 1914. Thanks to Political Wire for the news about the Illinois poll.
