Norman Solomon is a well-known journalist who lives in Marin County, California. He helped establish the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy. His commentary about California’s Proposition 14, the top-two measure on the June 8 ballot, is in the June 4 Marin Independent-Journal. It is also posted at CommonDreams.org. Thanks to Roy Ulrich for this news.
On June 3, the Libertarian Party sued the Virginia State Board of Elections over that state’s rigid rules on residency of petition circulators. No one may circulate a petition to get a candidate on the ballot for a district office, unless that circulator lives in that district. The case is Libertarian Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, filed in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, 1:10-cv-615.
There are lawsuits on this issue now pending in California, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, although Kansas has informally indicated that it will concede the issue. The recent Idaho case won on April 9, 2010, is now over, because the state did not appeal. Lawsuits on this issue have also won in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, in the last ten years.
On June 4, John B. Anderson declared that he is opposed to California’s Proposition 14, the top-two election law measure being on the June 8, 2010 ballot. Anderson was a leader of the Republican Party in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 1970’s. In 1980 he became an independent presidential candidate, and he got on the ballot in all 50 states after winning many ballot access lawsuits.
The Ohio legislature is about to go on recess, probably for several months. The legislature still hasn’t passed any bill to replace the old, unconstitutional ballot access law. The decision striking down the old law was in September 2006, so it will have been almost four years that Ohio has been without a valid law.
Ballot access improvements are contained in HB 260 and SB 8, which are very lengthy bills that deal with many election law issues. Those bills are hundreds of pages long, and many people have worked very hard to write those bills, but the consensus is that no such bill will make any headway until after the November 2010 election.
On June 4, former Republican congressman Joe Schwarz said he will not be an independent candidate this year for Governor of Michigan. See this story. He had been toying with the idea for three months.
Michigan is one of eight states in which no independent candidate for Governor has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot. Michigan didn’t have statutory procedures for independent candidates for any office, until 1988. The courts forced Michigan to add such procedures. Frequent commenter DemoRep had its own lawsuits as long ago as 1970 to force Michigan to create procedures for independent candidates. Although his lawsuits did not win, he was ahead of his time. In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court said that states must have procedures for independent candidates to get on the ballot. Even after this issue was won in the U.S. Supreme Court, it took 14 more years before the Michigan legislature would comply with it.
The other states that have never had an independent candidate for Governor on a government-printed ballot are Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Delaware and New Mexico, like Michigan, had no procedures for independent candidates for any office to get on the ballot, until the U.S. Supreme Court 1974 decision.
