On April 20, the Oklahoma Senate passed HB 1072, which lowers the petition for a previously unqualified party from 5% of the last vote cast, to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. The vote was unanimous.
Although the bill had passed the House earlier, the House version is 5% of the last gubernatorial vote, so the bill must go to a conference committee. Thanks to Richard Prawdzienski for this good news. 3% of the 2006 gubernatorial vote is 27,794 signatures.
On April 21, the Illinois State Board of Elections notified the U.S. Supreme Court that it does not plan to file a brief in Stevo v Keith. If the state were to file such a brief, the brief would explain why the Court should not hear the case. Generally, appellees don’t bother to file such briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Court wants such a brief, the Court will notify Illinois to please file one. Stevo v Keith is the lawsuit challenging the number of signatures needed for an independent candidate for U.S. House. The 7th circuit had upheld the law and Stevo is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case number is 08-1187.
California’s Secretary has released a new registration voter tally, as of March 20. When compared to the previous tally (the tally of February 10), the new tally shows a slight percentage gain for the Democratic, Libertarian, American Independent, and Peace & Freedom Parties, and a slight percentage decline for the Republican, Green, and Reform Parties.
The Democratic Party went from 44.52% of the state total, to 44.55%. Republicans declined from 31.14% to 31.10%. AIP went from 2.174% to 2.183%. Greens went from .669% to .666%. Libertarians went from .483% to .484%. Peace & Freedom went from .3237% to .3243%. Reform went from .160% to .144%. Independents declined from 20.55% to 20.53%. The Reform Party is not a qualified party in California, but the state tracks how many registrants it has. It now has 24,878 registrants, but needs 88,991 by January 6, 2010.
Arizona political parties that appeared on the November 2008 ballot need registration of two-thirds of 1% by November 2009, in order to remain on the ballot for 2010. Arizona recently did a registration tally. The official results show that, currently, a party needs 20,587 registrations to meet the requirement. The Arizona Libertarian Party has been doing a registration drive, and the party now has 20,256 registrants, so it only needs another 331 registrants to meet the threshold, and there are six months to finish. However, the threshold is a moving target, and by the time November 2009 comes around, it will probably be slightly higher.
Arizona Libertarian registration in November 2008 was 18,153.
The Arizona Green Party now has 4,210 registrants.
If either the Libertarian or Green Parties had managed to poll 5% for president in November 2008, there would be no need for either party to have any particular number of registrants. The two-thirds of 1% registration test is an alternative to meeting the 5% vote test.
The Connecticut House expects to vote on HB 6437, the National Popular Vote Plan, sometime in the next few weeks. See this article. The bill had passed the Joint Committee on Government Administration & Elections on March 25.
