Ohio Will Keep Four Minor Parties on 2010 Ballot

Posted on by December 3, 2009
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Because Ohio has no valid law in place on how a group becomes a qualified party, and because no bill to create a valid law is close to passing, the Ohio Secretary of State will leave the Constitution, Green, Libertarian, and Socialist Parties on the ballot for the 2010 election. Those four parties were also on the ballot in Ohio in 2008.

However, because the Ohio Constitution requires all ballot-qualified parties to nominate by primary, these parties must choose their nominees in a primary in May 2010. Candidates running for public office in primaries need their own petitions. For qualified minor parties, statewide candidates need 500 signatures to get on their own party’s primary ballot. Candidates running for U.S. House or state legislature or partisan county office need 25 signatures. Those petitions are due on February 18, 2010. The requirement for a primary was waived in 2008 because the four parties put on the ballot did not get on the ballot (via court order) until after the March 2008 primary was over.

Although HB 260 has passed the House, it has made no headway in the Senate. That bill sets out petition requirements for parties to get on the ballot. If that bill had passed already, minor parties would need 10,057 signatures to get on the 2010 ballot. But, obviously, no one can expect any party to fulfill a requirement that doesn’t exist yet.

Political Scientist Analyzes Why Chris Daggett Received Fewer Votes than Polls Had Predicted

Posted on by December 2, 2009
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David P. Redlawsk, a Political Science professor at Rutgers, has this op-ed in the Newark Star-Ledger, analyzing why New Jersey independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett only got 5.7% of the vote when polls close to the election had him at 20%. Redlawsk is also Director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. He finds, in post-election polling, that 45% of the people who had thought they would vote for Daggett did not actually vote for him because they thought he couldn’t win.

Connecticut Post Calls on Legislature to Fix Public Funding Law

Posted on by December 2, 2009
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The Connecticut Post has this editorial, praising Governor Jodi Rell for asking the legislature to remove the discriminatory parts of the public funding law. The legislature is coming back on December 15, and the Governor has asked that the legislature amend the public funding law so that it no longer discriminates against any candidates.

The Connecticut Post is Bridgeport’s daily newspaper.

Sponsors for Ballot Access Improvements Found in Three States Recently

Posted on by December 2, 2009
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Activists have located state legislators in three state recently, who will introduce bills to improve ballot access laws. In Maryland, a sponsor has been found who will introduce a bill to clarify that signatures on petitions need not be an exact match of the voter’s name as recorded on voter registration records.

In Michigan, a sponsor has been found for a bill that will let a ballot-qualified party change its name, so that the new name matches the name of the national party that the state party is affiliated with. This bill is especially needed by the Constitution Party. The Constitution Party changed its name at its national convention ten years ago, but in Michigan, the party is still being forced to keep its old name, the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

In Missouri, a sponsor has been found for a bill to fix the drafting error in the 1993 ballot access improvement bill. One of the purposes of the 1993 reform, which did pass and get signed into law, was to make it possible for unqualified parties to circulate a petition to qualify the party before that group had chosen its nominees. But due to a drafting error, the law still requires such a petition to list the name of the presidential elector candidates, and a presidential candidate, even though the law doesn’t force the group to list its other nominees.

New Jersey Bill to Force Governors to Appoint U.S. Senators From the Same Party As the Original Senator

Posted on by December 1, 2009
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On November 30, New Jersey Assembly Majority Whip John F. McKeon (D-West Orange) introduced A4271, a bill to provide that when a governor appoints a U.S. Senator to fill a vacancy, the governor must appoint someone who has been a member of the same party as the party of the original Senator.

The bill says the appointee “shall be from the same political party as the person vacating the office, and shall have been a member of the political party continuously from the time the person vacating the office began their current term of office.” The bill does not deal with a situation in which the original Senator was not a member of a qualified political party. Currently, the U.S. Senate has two members who were not the nominees of a qualified political party when they were elected. They are Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. U.S. Senators in the past who were registered independents part of the time they served in the Senate are Wayne Morse of Oregon (1953-1956), George Norris of Nebraska (1936-1943), and Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire (1999). Also, Harry F. Byrd, Jr., of Virginia, was elected as an independent in 1970 and again in 1976. Virginia does not have registration by party.

Another ambiguity introduced by the bill, if it were to become law, would be cases in which the original U.S. Senator had switched parties during his or her term. For example, Senator Arlen Specter changed his registration from “Republican” to “Democratic” in April 2009. One wonders how the bill would be intrepreted if someone like Senator Specter resigned or died while in office. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the news about the New Jersey bill.