On June 23, seven candidates for Governor of Rhode Island debated each other. See this story. Participating were two Democrats, two Republicans, two independents, and the only candidate running in the Moderate Party primary. The Rhode Island primary is not until September 14.
The news story is notable for giving a fair amount of space to describe what each candidate said. Sometimes press stories about multi-party debates say virtually nothing about the non-major party candidates.
Ray Boyd, who had formally announced on May 8 that he would be an independent candidate for Governor of Georgia, has decided to suspend his petition drive. He would have needed 44,089 signatures by July 13.
This is the second gubernatorial election in a row at which someone has set out to be an independent candidate for Governor of Georgia, and has not completed the petition. John Dashler had a similar experience in 2006.
Petition requirements as difficult as Georgia’s function as a gargantuan filing fee that is applied on a discriminatory basis. Neither Dashler nor Boyd was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get on the ballot.
SurveyUSA recently released a poll for the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. See the details here. The poll shows Republican incumbent Richard Burr at 50%, Democratic nominee Elaine Marshall at 40%, and Libertarian nominee Michael Beitler at 6%, with 5% undecided.
The poll also shows that 4% of Republicans support Beitler, 3% of Democrats support him, and 12% of independent voters support him. The poll also breaks down the respondents by age and sex. Voters least likely to support Beitler are those over age 65.
Past North Carolina Libertarian vote percentages for U.S. Senate have been: 1980 .42%, 1984 .42%, 1992 3.33%, 1996 .99%, 1998 1.84%, 2002 1.45%, 2004 1.38%, 2008 3.12%. Thanks to Political Wire for the link to the poll.
On October 12, a trial will begin in U.S. District Court in Idaho Republican Party v Ysursa, 08-cv-165. The issue is whether the party has a right to a primary process that excludes voters who are not in sympathy with the Republican Party.
The state recently presented an expert report by two political scientists. The synopsis is: (1) an original analysis of roll call voting data in the Idaho legislature suggests that political parties are extremely ideologically cohesive and quite strong. There is little overlap – if any – between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat in the legislature; (2) there is no evidence of a Trojan Horse candidate winning an election and serving as a Republican-in-name-only in the Idaho legislature; (3) the Idaho legislature is already extremely polarized; this could be exacerbated if the state moved to a closed primary system.”
It will be interesting to see if the Idaho Republican Party uses the data of political scientist Boris Shor to rebut the state’s conclusion from the state’s own evidence. Shor studied polarization in all 50 state legislatures, over the last 15 years. Although he did not draw many conclusions about his own data, another political scientist, Seth Masket, did review the Shor data. Masket concluded that there is virtually no correlation between openness of primary system and polarization. For example, the Shor data shows that Washington state has had the nation’s 2nd-most polarized legislature, and Washington has used either a blanket primary, or a top-two primary, for most of the last 15 years.
The state’s expert report does not explain why the Idaho legislature would become more polarized if the state had a closed Republican primary. If the answer is that different types of people would be chosen in the Republican primary if that primary were closed, that would contradict the state’s legal argument that the Republican Party is not injured by the open primary because the same people get nominated with either type of primary. UPDATE: this story describes the evidence presented so far by the Idaho Republican Party.
Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, elects its District Attorney on November 2, 2010. Two candidates are on the ballot, independent Robert Spence and Democratic incumbent Tommy Smith. According to this story in the Tuscaloosa News, Democrats may challenge Spence.
Elections officials say Spence has enough valid signatures. Alabama election law, sec. 17-7-1(c), says no one may qualify as an independent candidate “who was a candidate in the primary election of that year.” Democrats may challenge Spence because he filed to run in this year’s Democratic primary, even though he withdrew from the primary and his name did not appear on primary ballots, except on a few absentee ballots that had been printed before he had withdrawn.
