Hendersonville, North Carolina, used Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections in 2007. On April 9, the city council voted 4-1 to use it again in this year’s city elections. North Carolina law lets a limited number of cities use IRV on a trial basis if they wish.
According to an article in the New York Daily News of April 11, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has now secured the support of the county chair of the Bronx Borough Republican Party. New York election laws permit an independent (or a member of another party) to run in a party primary for Mayor of New York City, if that candidate gets permission to run from 3 of the 5 boroughs of the city. Bloomberg had already been endorsed for re-election this year by the leaders of the Brooklyn and Staten Island Republican Parties. Bloomberg has been a registered independent since late in 2007, and he expects to continue to be an independent.
It is difficult to remember any other instance at which the Republican Party of any state has nominated a registered independent for an important partisan office. Of course, Bloomberg has not formally been nominated yet. The primary is in September 2009. However, no one expects him to have any trouble winning the Republican primary. The only suspense had been whether the Republicans would let him run in their primary. Bloomberg has also recently been assured that he may run in the Independence Party primary. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
On April 11, the West Virginia Senate passed HB 2981, the bill to improve ballot access. It had already passed the House. The bill lowers the petition from 2% of the last vote cast, to 1%. It also moves the non-presidential petition deadline from May to August, so that it now matches the presidential petition deadline. Passage of this bill is certainly the most significant ballot access legislation that has passed any state legislature this year.
Assuming the bill is signed into law, the only states that will have no procedure for a minor party or independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot, that is at or below 2% of last vote cast in a midterm year, will be North Carolina and Oklahoma.
Katon Dawson, an official of the South Carolina Republican Party, has this op-ed in the April 8 issue of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, in support of a bill to make it illegal for primary voters to sign an independent candidate’s petition.
Dawson says current law, allowing any registered voter, to sign for an independent candidate, is not fair because a voter who signs for an independent, and who also votes in a partisan primary, is effectively nominating two different candidates.
The flaw in this argument is that signing a petition for an independent candidate is not the same act as nominating someone. A petition is a means for a voter to express the idea that the voter believes that the particular independent candidate belongs on the general election ballot. It does not necessarily mean that the voter has decided to vote for the independent. The sixth and the fourth circuits have recognized this principle, by striking down Kentucky and West Virginia laws that forced an independent candidate’s petition to say that the signers intend to vote for that independent candidate. Also, a U.S. District Court in Michigan in 1980 in Hall v Austin also contains a short essay on this matter.
Signing a petition cannot be equated with voting for someone, because elections for public office in the U.S., by strong tradition, are secret; yet signing a petition is not a secret act.
South Carolina’s law for independent candidates for district office is already very severe. South Carolina and North Carolina are the only states in the nation in which no independent candidate for U.S. House has ever managed to get on the ballot. South Carolina requires an independent candidate for U.S. House to submit exactly 10,000 valid signatures, and no one has ever done it. South Carolina also rarely has any independent candidates for the legislature on the ballot. Yet Dawson’s op-ed claims that independent candidates are currently treated more leniently by the state than partisan candidates. Thanks to Scott West for the link.
The Nevada Secretary of State’s bill to require minor parties and independent candidates to make their nominations in the first few months of an election year is now officially dead. AB 82 made no headway, and the deadline has now passed for bills to have made some progress, in order to pass. Other bills that failed to pass include two bills that would have moved the primary from August to September.
