The Monkey Cage is a political science blog established in 2007. Here is a general discussion of California’s Proposition 14, the top-two election system, or jungle primary.
The opening says Proposition 14 passed with 54% of the vote, but every indication, as more and more ballots are being counted, is that the true figure is 53%.
Mark Noble, an Ohio Libertarian, has just completed a study of the voters who chose a Libertarian Party primary ballot last month, in Franklin County, Ohio. Franklin County is Ohio’s second-most populous county, and includes Columbus. In Franklin County last month, 1,351 voters chose a Libertarian primary ballot.
The analysis shows that in 2008, 22% of those voters had chosen a Republican primary ballot; that 27% had chosen a Democratic primary ballot; and that 41% had not voted in any party’s primary. Erickson hopes to do further research on this for counties other than Franklin County. In 2008, the only parties that had primaries in Ohio were the Democratic and Republican Parties.
On June 16, the 7th circuit released a 40-page opinion in Gerald A. Judge v Governor Pat Quinn, 09-2219. The issue was whether Illinois must hold a special election for President Obama’s old Senate seat earlier than November 2010. Even if Obama had not been elected President, his seat, the Class III seat, would have been up in November 2010 anyway.
The 7th circuit said that the U.S. District Court had been correct to deny injunctive relief, and that the plaintiffs had no right to expect a special election in 2009. But, the decision suggests that the state must hold a special election for that seat on November 2, 2010, to fill that seat for the short amount of time remaining in the current term. Thus, Illinois will probably be required not only to hold the normal election for that seat for the term January 2011-January 2017, but to also hold a simultaneous election to fill that same seat for the period November 2010 through January 2011.
Because of legal technicalities, the issue was not fully resolved, and the U.S. District Court will hold a new hearing in the case on June 23.
Maine and several other New England states still require petitioning candidates to submit their completed petitions to various town clerks around the state. Then, after the town clerks have finished checking the petitions, the candidate or political party supporting that candidate must collect the petitions and deliver them to the Secretary of State.
This cumbersome procedure ought to be obsolete in every state, because federal legislation for some years has required each state elections office to have its own list of all registered voters in the state.
This year, in Maine, an independent gubernatorial candidate, Alex Hammer, collected almost 6,000 signatures toward the requirement of 4,000. To save time, money, and energy, he put the petitions he had collected from certain towns on his web page, using high resolution techniques for the scan (300dpi). He then asked these particular town clerks to check the signatures by examining the images.
However, the Secretary of State ruled that this method of delivery is not permitted, so Hammer is off the ballot, even though he is virtually certain to have enough valid signatures. Using the old-fashioned system of delivering signatures in person, he already has been notified that he has 3,200 valid signatures, and there are still 1,400 unchecked signatures. He expects to file a lawsuit to reverse the Secretary of State’s decision.
On Thursday, June 17, two important ballot access lawsuits were argued in two different federal courts.
In U.S. District Court in Arkansas, Judge Price Marshall heard Green Party of Arkansas v Daniels. See this story. The story is not is as well-written as it could be. The lawsuit concerns the state’s rules on how a party retains its spot on the ballot, not on how it gets on the ballot. This is a tough case to win, because there is no federal court precedent from any state striking down the requirements for a party to retain its spot on the ballot. A somewhat similar case is pending for the New Mexico Green Party.
Also on June 17, the 9th circuit, meeting in Honolulu, heard Ralph Nader’s case from 2004 that challenges the number of signatures for an independent presidential candidate, which is six times as many signatures as are required for a party to get itself on the ballot. Nader argues that there is no rational reason to make ballot access for a single independent candidate more difficult than for a new party. In Hawaii, when a new party qualifies, the state must print up a primary ballot for it and the party is easily able to run for many partisan offices. If the chief rationale for ballot access restrictions is to keep ballots from being too crowded, the Hawaii policy makes no sense.
Judge Richard Clifton seemed to feel that if a state wants to encourage people to form parties instead of becoming independent candidates, a state may legitimately do that. The other two judges, Betty Fletcher and Harry Pregerson, asked few questions and didn’t seem especially interested in the case. The case is Nader v Cronin, 08-16444. No newspaper seems to have covered the hearing.
