On November 23, the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. Commonwealth in the western Pacific, held a run-off gubernatorial election. The Covenant Party nominee, incumbent Benigno Filial, appears to have defeated the Republican Party nominee, Heinz Hofschneider, by a margin of 52%-48%. See this story.
Several prestigious good-government organizations have tentatively decided to file an amicus curiae brief with the North Carolina Supreme Court, in the pending ballot access case filed in 2005 by the Libertarian Party. The Green Party had joined somewhat later as a co-plaintiff. The North Carolina State Court of Appeals had recently upheld all of North Carolina’s laws on how minor parties get on the ballot, but the vote had been 2-1, so the case is automatically being heard by the State Supreme Court.
The organizations interested in supporting the minor parties in court include North Carolina Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina.
North Carolina requires more signatures to get a new party on the ballot than any other state, except for California. North Carolina is also one of the few states that won’t let voters register into unqualified parties. And North Carolina is the only state that lists some of the qualified parties on the state income tax form (to facilitate a donation from the taxpayer to the political party) but won’t list all of the qualified parties. North Carolina says the tax form should only list the parties with registration of at least 1% of the state total, so that even though the Libertarian Party is on the ballot through 2012, it can’t be listed on the tax form.
On November 23, the Virginia State Board of Elections re-certified the November 2008 election results, to take account of another 105 votes that were counted this month. These ballots had not been counted last year because they arrived in the postal mail to late to be counted. They were foreign absentee votes. Recently a U.S. District Court ruled that these ballots should be counted, on the grounds that it wasn’t the voter’s fault that they arrived late, because elections officials had mailed them out to the voter too late.
The new votes were cast as follows: Barack Obama 49 votes, John McCain 53 votes, Bob Barr 1 vote, miscellaneous write-ins 2 votes, none for the other ballot-listed candidates, who were Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney. The new presidential vote totals aren’t up on the Virginia State Board of Elections webpage yet, but they should be soon.
As of November 23, the tally in New York’s special election from November 3, 2009, for the U.S. House, 23rd district, stands at: Bill Owens (Democrat, Working Families) 72,711; Doug Hoffman (Conservative) 69,314; Dede Scozzafava (Republican, Independence) 8,619. Only 628 absentee ballots remain to be counted. See this story. Although it seems impossible that Owens can be defeated, Hoffman might conceivably mount some sort of challenge to the vote-counting process.
The Rhode Island State Board of Elections wants to levy a fine of $10,000 against Ken Block, because Block donated $20,000 to the Moderate Party of Rhode Island. Block is the person most responsible for conceiving of the Moderate Party and bringing it into existence as a ballot-qualified party earlier this year. See this story.
The whole purpose of limits on how much individuals may contribute to political parties is to prevent big donors from indirectly bribing influential politicians. Such limits make no sense when applied to political parties that have never elected any officials. The U.S. Supreme Court made this point in McConnell v FEC, and almost invited a minor party someday to bring an as-applied challenge. McConnell v FEC is the 2003 decision that upheld most of the McCain-Feingold law, which made it illegal for individuals to donate large amounts of money to national committees of political parties. It is not known if Block will defend himself using the constitutional argument. He does not concede that his donation broke any Rhode Island campaign law. He donated $10,000 to the state Moderate Party, and another $10,000 to one of the town committees of that party. The law is ambiguous about whether that is permitted.
