Jay Schneiderman has been a member of the Suffolk County, New York, county legislature since 2003. According to this story, he will run this year for U.S. House in the First District, without first seeking the nomination of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

Schneiderman will seek the Independence Party nomination. He has been registered in that party since 2008. He is so popular, he was re-elected to the county legislature in 2008 with the support of all five ballot-qualified parties, Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, and Working Families. Suffolk County is one of the state’s most populous counties; it comprises the eastern half of Long Island. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Schwarz says he will say for sure whether he will be an independent candidate this year for Governor of Michigan within a few days. But he says he is leaning in favor. See this story.

On February 23, three Oregon groups filed an amicus curiae brief in Doe v Reed, the case that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear on April 28. The issue is whether petition signatures should be private. The amicus was filed by Common Sense for Oregon, The Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance, and Oregonians in Action.

The amici brief says that petition signers are not private in Oregon, and gives concrete example of how some Oregon petitions have been so controversial that signers were harassed. The brief gives details about a petition to recall three city councilmembers in West Linn, Oregon. Emotions ran so high, some signers later asked that their names be blacked out, before the petition had been submitted, because they were afraid to let it be known that they had signed the recall. Proponents of the recall received late-night threatening phone calls. Finally, even though they believed they had enough valid signatures, they chose not to submit them. The amicus also describes incidents from the Nader independent petition in Oregon in 2004, when signers received vaguely intimidating letters from a law firm, saying that the voter’s name had appeared on the Nader petition, asserting that the Nader petition had many fraudulent signatures, and asking the voter if he or she had really signed the petition.