The Hawaii Green Party is now a ballot-qualified party. The state has already approved the party’s petition, which required 692 valid signatures. The party will now be given its own primary, and anyone can get on the party’s primary ballot with either 25 or 15 signatures, depending on which office. Any registered voter may sign.

The only other ballot-qualified parties in Hawaii this year, so far, are the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian Parties. The Free Energy Party was also petitioning for party status and it is not known if that party’s petition was successful. The deadline was April 1.

On April 1, Meg Whitman, leading in the polls for the California Republican gubernatorial nomination, said that she opposes Proposition 14, the “top-two” ballot measure. She said that she is favorably disposed toward some sort of open primary, but she opposes Proposition 14 because it would lead to so few choices on the November ballot. She specifically criticized Proposition 14 because in some legislative or congressional districts there would be November elections in which no Republican appears on the ballot.

Whitman made this statement in Chico, at one of her public campaign events. Her comments were in response to a question from the audience.

A Superior court in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, will hear oral arguments in Brody v North Carolina Board of Elections on May 20. This is the case in which an independent candidate for the legislature argues that he should not need any petition to be on the November ballot this year, because he ran for the same office in November 2008 as an independent candidate, and in 2008 he polled 30% of the vote. He has paid the filing fee this year and argues that he has already shown a modicum of voter support.

As far as is known, this is an interesting argument that has never before been made by any independent candidate in any state. The principle that parties deserve to be on the ballot automatically in the current election, based on their share of the vote in the previous election, is very widespread in the U.S. Political parties in North Carolina remain ballot-qualified if they poll 2% for President or Governor, so the plaintiff-candidate, Mark Brody, says his previous vote ought to mean something.