The Durango, Colorado Herald of January 17 has this story about the pending lawsuit against a Colorado law that keeps independent candidates off the ballot if they have been registered members of a political party during the 17 months before the election. This case, Riddle v Secretary of State, has received far more publicity than most ballot access lawsuits do. Generally newspapers don’t cover such lawsuits until there is a decision.
On January 15, the Ohio Attorney General issued an opinion, saying most ex-felons may circulate petitions in Ohio. In 2006, a law was passed that made it illegal for them to circulate petitions. But, the Attorney General’s Opinion says that the law didn’t say it was intended to be retroactive, so for an ex-felon sentenced before 2006, that restriction doesn’t affect him or her. See this story. Thanks to Steve Linnabary for the link. Here is the eleven-page opinion.
In October 2003, California held a recall election to determine if Governor Gray Davis should be recalled. As is normal in California recall elections, the same ballot asking voters to vote “Yes” or “No” on the recall also had a separate section, holding an election for the office, just in case the voters vote “Yes” on recall. That election was conducted with a single ballot that carried the names of all candidates, and all voters received an identical ballot. No majority was required to elect. It is not possible to know exactly how the members of any particular party voted, but it is possible to make an estimate.
The California October 2003 ballot is famous for having 135 candidates listed for Governor to replace Davis. Arnold Schwarzenegger won that election, with 4,206,284 votes. His nearest Republican competitor, Tom McClintock, only got 1,161,287 votes. The ballot carried party labels, and Schwarzenegger had “Republican” next to his name.
Recently a proponent of the “top-two open primary” ballot measure, set for the June 2010 ballot, wrote an op-ed that appeared in at least three newspapers. Here is the version that appeared in La Prensa, which is identical to the version that appeared in the Grass Valley Union and the Santa Ynez Valley Journal. It says “In the 2003 recall, an election very similar to how the new open primary would work, independent voters elected Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who could never have won a Republican primary.”
A look at the 2003 election results shows that this claim is not true. In October 2003, 35.30% of the registered voters were Republicans, according to the Secretary of State’s registration tally for that election. Assuming that registered Republicans turned out in the same proportion as other voters, that means that 3,056,210 registered Republicans voted. In reality, the number was probably higher, because Republicans in California traditionally have higher turnout than other voters.
Now assume that the Republican candidates for Governor, other than Schwarzenegger, received all their votes only from registered Republicans. There were 1,229,240 votes for these anti-Schwarzenegger Republican candidates. That still leaves 1,826,970 registered Republican voters who must have voted either for Schwarzenegger, or for a Democrat, a minor party member, or an independent candidate. The only minor party or independent candidates who received as much as 15,000 votes were Peter Camejo of the Green Party (who got 242,247 votes) and Arianna Huffington, an independent (who got 47,505 votes). Even if 600,000 of the registered Republicans voted for a Democrat or for a minor party candidate (which is wildly unlikely), that means that at least 1,226,970 registered Republicans voted for Schwarzenegger. So, Schwarzenegger would have defeated Tom McClintock and all the other Republicans, even in a closed Republican primary, in 2003.
Proponents of the “top-two open primary” in California, in their writings so far, have not applied analytical rigor. No commentary yet published in California in favor of that system has yet mentioned that two states have already tried the system. One would think, if one were advocating an idea that had already been tried in two other states, one would point to what has actually happened in those other two states to validate one’s claims.
The New York Times of January 16 has this article about protests in Iraq, over a government decision to bar hundreds of candidates from the ballot, in the regional elections set for March. The candidates were removed from the ballot on the basis that in the past they had been too closely associated with the former ruling party, the Baath Party.
Six states in the United States still have election laws that bar certain political parties, or certain candidates, from the ballot, based on their beliefs. They are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill several years ago that would have eliminated a related law. The California law, which is still on the books because of the Governor’s veto, bars anyone who has been a member of the Communist Party in the last five years from being employed by a public school district. That is not an election law but it is a close cousin of other California election laws that bar subversive parties from the ballot and that require candidates to sign an oath that they have not been a member of the Communist Party in the last five years. The laws are not enforced because they have been held unconstitutional, but the legislature hasn’t repealed them.
The Arizona Daily Sun of January 16 has this article about yesterday’s court order in the Green Party’s ballot access victory.
The quote from Arizona’s Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, indicates he thinks that Ralph Nader in 2004 was the Green Party’s presidential nominee. Actually, Nader in 2004 was an independent candidate.
