This article in the Gouverneur Times details the problems St. Lawrence County, New York, appears to be having, counting the votes in the special U.S. House election of November 3, 2009. There are still no official tallies for that election.
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North Carolina has had government-printed ballots ever since 1901, and no independent candidate for either House of Congress has ever appeared on such a ballot. Independent candidates for U.S. House need signatures of 4% of the number of registered voters, which is as much as 20,000 in some districts. Here is a story about Brad Smith, who is attempting to obtain the needed 17,000 valid signatures to run in the 5th district in 2010. Here is his web page.
A lawsuit is currently pending against the independent requirement for U.S. House, called Greene v Bartlett, 5:08-cv-0088, U.S. District Court, western district. It was filed in 2008 and hasn’t had oral arguments yet. It is moving slowly because the attorney for the plaintiff, Law Professor Bob Bastress, is on a special assignment to redraft West Virginia sentencing laws, which is occupying all of his time. But he will be back working on the case next month.
Two lawsuits involving minor parties have oral arguments during the first week in December. One is Libertarian Party v Dardenne, 09-30307, being heard in the 5th circuit on December 3. This is the case on whether the Louisiana Secretary of State was correct last year when he refused to permit the ballot-qualified Libertarian Party to file its presidential elector paperwork on September 12. The panel will be Judges James Dennis, Catharine Haynes, and Carl Stewart. Judge Dennis was one of the judges who upheld the Texas ballot access law for independent presidential candidates in 2004. The other two judges have never had a ballot access case.
On December 4, a U.S. District Court in Long Island, New York, will hear oral arguments in MacKay v Crews, 2:09-cv-2218. This is another lawsuit to identify the actual national party officers of the Reform Party. The judge has promised a speedy decision. The first-named Defendant, Kay Crews, is not a member of the Reform Party. She was the court-appointed parliamentarian appointed by a Texas court to supervise the party’s national convention in Texas last year.
Also during the first week in December, Washington state will be filing its brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in John Doe v Sam Reed, the case over whether names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be made public. It will be interesting to see how the Washington Secretary of State defends his position. In the 9th circuit he argued that the petitions aren’t truly private in any event, because as petition sheets circulate, someone who is signing near the bottom of the sheet can see the names and addresses of people who signed the same sheet earlier. This is not a very convincing argument. Some of the referendum petition sheets at issue in this particular case were only circulated in churches, not in open public spaces, so only fellow church members would have seen the same sheets. Also, census data and income tax forms are considered private, but it is inevitable that some government employees see the information.
The Hawaii Green Party recently obtained this newspaper publicity for its petition drive to re-qualify the party for the ballot for 2010.
The Green Party has placed candidates on the Hawaii ballot in every state/federal election, starting in 1992. The only other states about which that can be said are California, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
Although it had already been reported that the Libertarian Party won ten partisan elections in Pennsylvania on November 3, 2009, it had not been previously reported that two of the wins were in a contest in which the Libertarians had ballot-listed major party opponents.
Many minor party victories in partisan races in Pennsylvania occur because the minor party nominees are the only candidates on the ballot. Many small townships in Pennsylvania have trouble finding individuals willing to serve.
However, in the recent election for Borough Council in Houston, Pennsylvania, the two Libertarians who were elected had Democratic Party opponents on the November 3, 2009 ballot. Houston is in Washington County, in the southwest part of the state. It has a population of 1,314. The voters were choosing three council members. The results were: Libertarian Paula Meddings 119 votes, Libertarian Chad Roberts 118 votes, Democrat James Stubenbordt 97 votes, Democrat David Schmalz 91 votes, Libertarian Seth Fosmire 57 votes. So, two Libertarians and one Democrat were elected.