Ninth Circuit Says Voting Rights Act Applies to Felon Disenfranchisement Issue Only in Limited Circumstances

Posted on by October 7, 2010
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On October 7, an en banc panel of the 9th circuit ruled that the federal Voting Rights Act cannot be used to overturn a state’s restriction on felon or ex-felon voting, unless the plaintiffs can demonstrate that the particular state passed the restriction on felon or ex-felon voting with the intent to discriminate against racial or ethnic minorities.  See the per curiam opinion here.  It is only 7 pages long.  Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.  There are also some longer concurring opinions.

On January 5, 2010, the original 9th circuit panel had ruled 2-1 that the Voting Rights Act can be used to overturn Washington state’s ban on felons and certain ex-felons, but that earlier opinion is now reversed.  The case is Farrakhan v Gregoire, 06-35669.

Inclusive New York Gubernatorial Debate Set for October 18

Posted on by October 7, 2010
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The Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, has agreed to participate in a gubernatorial debate at Hofstra University.  All seven ballot-listed gubernatorial candidates are invited.  All have accepted, except that it is not known if Republican nominee Carl Paladino will participate.  UPDATE:  Paladino has accepted also.  See this newer story.  Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news, and to the poster for the update..  See this older story as well.

New York State Ballot, a Horrible Example of Ballot Design

Posted on by October 7, 2010
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The New York state November 2010 ballot (in counties outside New York city) will look like this.

Note that this is a paper ballot.  It could have been arranged so that each party has its own row.  Or it could have been arranged to dispense with rows or columns, and instead been printed in an “office group” format, in which all candidates for one particular office are listed together under the title of each office in turn.

However, this paper ballot arbitrarily creates one row for seven parties (Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Green, and Rent is 2 Damn High).  Then it squeezes each of the other four parties into dual rows.  Therefore, the Libertarian and Freedom Parties share a row, and the Anti-Prohibition and Taxpayer Parties share another row.

There was some justification for such a ballot design when New York used mechanical voting machines.  The face of the voting machine only had room for nine rows or nine columns.  But there is no justification whatsoever for that ballot format when all ballots are printed pieces of paper.

If the Credico lawsuit wins, then Randy Credico will be featured in the Anti-Prohibition Party row as well as the Libertarian Party row, and voters can choose which line to vote for him on.  But the basic bad ballot design will still be a problem.

Lower State Court in Pennsylvania Accepts Validity of Signatures Collected by non-Residents, but Then Rules that Candidate Still Lacks Enough Valid Signatures

Posted on by October 7, 2010
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On October 7, a Commonwealth Court heard In re Nomination Petition of Carl Stevenson again.  This is the case over whether an independent candidate for the legislature should be on the ballot.  The first time this case had been in Commonwealth Court, the Commonwealth Court Judge had ruled that signatures collected by someone who lives outside the district are invalid.  Then the State Supreme Court had ruled that the Commonwealth Court should look at the petition again, and this time check all the signatures, even those collected by the out-of-district circulators.

Another Commonwealth Court judge had the case this time, and he ruled that signatures by out-of-district circulators are valid.  But then, having looked at all signatures, he ruled that the candidate still doesn’t have enough signatures.  See this story.