Florida is the only state in which there is a ballot-qualified Tea Party. There may be Tea Party candidates on the November 2010 ballot, with that label, in other states, but the Tea Party isn’t a ballot-qualified party in any state except Florida.
The Tea Party has 193 registrants in Florida. Thanks to the Florida Secretary of State’s office for making this information available, especially to Nolah Shotwell, a helpful employee in that office.
On May 25, the Colorado legislature sent HB 1271 to the Governor. He has 30 days from that day to either sign or veto the bill. The bill eases ballot access for independent candidates. Currently no one may be an independent candidate (except for President) if the person was registered as a member of a qualified party for a year before filing. The bill makes that law less restrictive, and only looks at the independent candidate’s registration history back to January 1 of the election year.
On May 27, the South Carolina Senate passed H. 3746, which makes it more difficult for an independent candidate to get on the ballot. The bill must now return to the House because it was amended in the Senate. The South Carolina legislature adjourns in two weeks.
H. 3746 requires an independent candidate to file a declaration no later than primary day in June. Currently, independents can wait until after the June primary to decide whether to petition or not. The bill requires each petition sheet to be notarized, and says that no notary public may sign the petition if he or she notarized any petition sheet for that same candidate. The bill says no one may circulate an independent petition earlier than six months before the deadline. The bill does not permit anyone to sign unless that person had been a registered voter at least thirty days before the petition is submitted.
Current law not only doesn’t require petitions to be notarized, it doesn’t even require the circulator to sign the petition or otherwise identify himself or herself. That makes it possible for a petition to be posted on a bulletin board or some other public place, where anyone can sign in the absence of any circulator.
The Senate Judiciary Committee version of the bill had said no one may sign if that person voted in a primary, and the Senate Judiciary Committee version also lowered the number of signatures. However, the Senate itself took those two amendments out of the bill. The Committee had lowered the statewide petition from 10,000 to 4,000, and had lowered the number of signatures from 5% of the number of registered voters, to 3%.
South Carolina requirements for independent candidates are already so difficult, no one has ever qualified as an independent candidate for either House of Congress, nor for Governor. Why the legislature wants to make it still more difficult is a mystery. The South Carolina newspapers have not publicized this bill.
Michael Feinstein, a Green Party leader and a former Mayor of Santa Monica, has this article about California’s Proposition 14 at Fox & Hounds. Feinstein also debates Proposition 14 on Los Angeles Public Radio KPCC on May 27, Thursday, at 1:50 p.m. The pro-14 position will be represented by attorney David Fleming.
For a year now, the campaign to pass Proposition 14, the California top-two measure on the June 8, 2010 ballot, has ignored the problem that Proposition 14 injures minor parties.
However, the Los Angeles Times ran this editorial on May 24, “Proposition 14 Won’t Destroy Minor Parties.” The editorial takes the tack that minor parties are useful to society and that Proposition 14 would not injure them. However, the editorial does not mention the fact that Proposition changes the requirements for ballot-qualified parties to remain ballot-qualified; ignores the problem that members of unqualified parties can’t have their party label on the June ballot; and ignores the evidence from Washington and Louisiana about the effect of “top-two” on minor party candidates chances of qualifying for the general election.
Now Fox & Hounds as carried this article by one of the editors of the California Target Book. The California Target Book is published by, and is intended for, political consultants. The 2010 Primary Edition of the California Target Book costs $1,200. The article attacks minor parties for failing to run many candidates in California. However, the article fails to point out that California’s minor parties polled record percentages of the vote in 2008 for their legislative candidates. One would think that a political data resource that costs $1,200 would have studied the election returns.
In 2008, the Libertarian Party candidates for California Assembly averaged 6.87% of the vote cast in the districts in which the party had candidates. The party had 15 Assembly candidates, out of 80 seats, and their average was the highest in the history of the California Libertarian Party. All of these races also had both Democratic and Republican nominees. The Libertarians running for State Senate averaged 5.92%, in the 5 seats (out of 20 that were up). They also were all in races with both Democratic and Republican nominees.
The Peace & Freedom Party in 2008 had three Assembly candidates, who averaged 8.29%, although one of the races had only one major party opponent. That was the best average for PFP in Assembly races since 1978. The Peace & Freedom Party also polled the best percentage of the vote for President in 2008 that it had ever received in California.
The California Target Book editor who wrote the Fox & Hounds piece also says that minor party candidates for statewide office in California are “vanity” candidates. That would be news to the 5.3% of the voters who voted for Peter Camejo for Governor in 2002, and the 5.5% of the voters who voted for Ed Clark for Governor in 1978.
