An independent candidate in Georgia, Eugene Moon, is launching an attempt to get on the ballot for U.S. House in 2010, in the 9th district. Here is his web page. The web page notes that the legal requirement is over 21,000 valid signatures, plus he must pay a filing fee of over $6,000. As noted many times previously on this blog, no one has completed the Georgia petition for that office since 1964. No candidate in history, in any state, has ever overcome a petition hurdle for that office in excess of 12,919 signatures, if the signatures were checked.

The Georgia 9th district is in the northwest part of the state. No incumbent is running in that district this year. The current incumbent is leaving Congress so as to run for Governor.

When a candidate did succeed in 1964 in Georgia with this type of petition, the number required was 6,500 signatures. Back then, the Georgia petitions were due in October of the election year and they were not checked for validity. The candidate who successfully petitioned in Georgia in 1964 was Milton Lent, an independent.

Cam Ward, a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, plans to introduce a bill in the 2010 legislature to lower the number of signatures for minor parties and for independent candidates. Ward is a Republican from Alabaster, a suburb south of Birmingham. The bill will lower the petition from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5% of that same base.

Ward introduced the same bill in 2009, except that due to a drafting error, it only lowered the independent candidate requirement, not the minor party petition requirement. The 2010 bill will include both types of petition. The 2009 bill passed the House Constitution and Elections Committee unanimously, but then it never made any further headway. The 2010 session of the legislature convenes next week and adjourns in April.

Ward is not running for re-election to the House in 2010. Instead he is running for the State Senate.

The San Jose Mercury News has this story about Verafirma, a company that has developed technology to let people sign petitions electronically. The company says it already has a customer, who will use it to help put an initiative on the California ballot. The story says the Secretary of State doesn’t know whether the method is legal, but if someone uses it, the legality should be resolved fairly soon.