The June 11 issue of the Dallas Morning News has this interview with Kat Swift, director of the Texas Green Party. Swift did an excellent job. It’s especially valuable that she mentioned that before 1967, Texas did not require any petition whatsoever for a minor party to be on the ballot, and yet Texas never had more than six parties on a government-printed ballot.
On June 12, the Texas Libertarian Party held its state nominating convention. See this story. Kinky Friedman, who was on the ballot in 2006 as an independent candidate for Governor, addressed the convention. Attendance was approximately 200.
The June 13 Washington Post has this analysis by Dan Balz, saying the voters are angrier than usual and that makes the election more difficult to predict. He did not discuss minor party or independent candidates.
It seems likely that every state will have minor party or independent candidates on the November 2010 ballot for Congress, except New Mexico and Washington. Washington’s “top-two” system will almost certainly confine the November ballot to only Democrats and Republicans, just as it did in 2008, the first time it was used in that state.
The ACLU, which is fighting Montana’s independent candidate deadline (for office other than President) of March, has filed this brief in the 9th circuit. The case is called Kelly v McCulloch.
The U.S. District Court had dismissed the case, claiming the plaintiffs don’t have standing. The new brief makes an overwhelmingly strong argument that the U.S. District Court judge was wrong.
Gail Collins, a regular columnist for the New York Times, has this June 12 column which talks about the recent South Carolina Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. She concludes by saying, “We’ve spent decades now working on the assumption that the problem with American politics is the strength of political parties. This week, California eliminated party primaries entirely in favor of a system where all the candidates run on one ballot and the top two finishers move on to the November election. We’ll see how that works…the alternative to parties is an every-voter-for-herself system that would inevitably leave people staring at endless choices among candidates they’ve never heard of. The polling places become casinos where you pull the lever and pray. Maybe the real answer is not to make the parties weaker but to make them better.”
She could have said, although she didn’t, that another answer is to make it possible for new parties to compete in a level playing system.
