Doug Clark, columnist for the Greensboro, North Carolina, News-Record, has this column criticizing North Carolina’s strict ballot access law for independent candidates.
North Carolina this year requires more signatures for a statewide independent than any other state except California. North Carolina requires 85,379 valid signatures. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s web page has this link to preliminary, unofficial primary election returns. Ohio held primaries for the Constitution, Green, Libertarian and Socialist Parties, as well as the Democratic and Republican Parties, on May 4.
The Secretary of State’s election returns do not say how many voters chose the primary ballot of any particular party. But from the returns for the statewide candidates, one can know that at least this number of voters chose a minor party ballot: Libertarian 4,255; Constitution 1,737; Green 882; Socialist 369. It is true that the Libertarian Party candidate for Attorney General is listed as having received 6,146 votes, but this is almost certainly a mistake in the preliminary returns, because all the other statewide Libertarians received between 4,120 and 4,255 votes (each was unopposed), and it is wildly unlikely that approximately 2,000 voters would have chosen a Libertarian Party primary ballot and then left all the statewide offices blank except for Attorney General.
Ruth Marcus, a renowned Washington Post columnist, has this column, suggesting that Arizona’s public funding program, implemented in 1998, has had the effect of electing more conservatives to the legislature than would otherwise be the case.
The column does not say, but others have said, that the public funding program, which requires candidates to obtain $5 contributions from a specified number of donors, has helped candidates who are members of large churches. Social connections between church members make it more likely for candidates who are church members to find enough people willing to contribute the needed $5, and therefore easier for them to qualify for public funding. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
On May 5, the entire Eighth Circuit reversed an earlier decision of a 3-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit, and ruled that Martin, South Dakota, need not use cumulative voting for its city council elections. Here is the decision, which is Cottier v City of Martin, 07-1628.
Cumulative voting systems typically give voters three votes, in an election at which three candidates are to be elected. A voter is free to distribute his or her votes in any way. In other words, a voter can give one vote to each of three candidates; or a voter can give 1.5 votes to each of two candidates, or a voter can give all 3 votes to one candidate. The case arose because Native Americans in Martin have not been able to win seats on the city council under the city’s at-large system. Native Americans had sued, charging that the city’s at-large system violates the federal Voting Rights Act. They had won the case, but the city had asked the full circuit to overturn the decision, and now the city has won by a vote of 7-4. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
On May 4, six U.S. Senators introduced a bill to require the states to let any voter vote by mail. The bill only pertains to federal elections. They also introduced a second bill to provide grants to states to help pay for the program. See this press release. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the six, also introduced his own bill to require the states to set up methods by which unregistered persons may register to vote on-line. The federal government already requires states to use postcard registration forms, although that law doesn’t apply to states that let voters register at the polls on election day. Thus there is already considerable precedent for the federal government to legislative in this area, although the federal laws only relate to federal elections. Wyden’s on-line voter registration bill does not yet have a bill number.
