Dell Incorporated, maker of computers, has offered to buy Perot Systems Corporation for $30 per share. Ross Perot and his family are selling the company that he founded after his first company was bought by General Motors in 1988. See this story. According to other stories, it is estimated that Ross Perot Sr. was already worth $5 billion, and his son Ross Jr. was already worth $2 billion, and the sale will add $1 billion to Perot family wealth.
On September 21, a state court judge in New Jersey said that the lawsuit filed on September 18, attacking New Jersey’s discriminatory ballot design, cannot be settled in time to affect the November 3, 2009 gubernatorial election. See this story. That does not mean that the lawsuit will not proceed. Probably a majority of constitutional election law lawsuits are not decided until after the election.
New Jersey has the worst ballot design of any state, for partisan elections, relative to how independent and minor party candidates are treated. Almost all of the counties print party column headings in large print, that say “Democratic”, “Republican”, and “Nomination by Petition.” All the non-major party candidates are squeezed into the “Nomination by Petition” column (sometimes there is more than one such column).
On September 21, a state court judge in New Jersey said that the lawsuit filed on September 18, attacking New Jersey’s discriminatory ballot design, cannot be settled in time to affect the November 3, 2009 gubernatorial election. See this story. That does not mean that the lawsuit will not proceed. Probably a majority of constitutional election law lawsuits are not decided until after the election.
New Jersey has the worst ballot design of any state, for partisan elections, relative to how independent and minor party candidates are treated. Almost all of the counties print party column headings in large print, that say “Democratic”, “Republican”, and “Nomination by Petition.” All the non-major party candidates are squeezed into the “Nomination by Petition” column (sometimes there is more than one such column).
The Complaint filed last week by independent New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett, and Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Kaplan, is now available here. It is Olson v Corzine, and challenges the format of New Jersey ballots, which always place the Democratic and Republican nominees in the best spots on the November ballots. The complaint is very strong on listing social science research that shows that ballot format does make a difference in voting behavior.
The U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th circuit, has set a briefing schedule in South Carolina Green Party v South Carolina Election Commission. All the briefs will be in by October 30. The case concerns the constitutionality of a South Carolina law that says if one party has already nominated its candidate for a particular office, and then that nominee tries and fails to get the nomination of another party, then the first party is no longer able to run that candidate in the November election. In the particular incident which triggered the lawsuit, the Green Party nominated Eugene Platt for the legislature. Later, Platt tried to get the Democratic nomination as well (South Carolina permits two parties to jointly run the same nominee). Because Platt tried to get the Democratic nomination and failed, the Green Party was told that it couldn’t run Platt as its own nominee.
