The November 18 issue of the Oakland Tribune, the leading newspaper of California’s East Bay region, has this op-ed calling on California election officials to let Oakland and Berkeley implement Instant Runoff Voting for their own city elections. Voters in both cities voted for IRV years ago, but the Secretary of State has delayed approving vote-counting machines that can handle IRV.
The November 18 issue of the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch has this op-ed, drawing attention to the ballot access improvement bill pending in the Ohio legislature. The timing is good, because that bill, HB 260, is expected to receive a vote in the Ohio House on November 18.
HB 260 is several hundred pages long, and deals with many aspects of election law. Until this op-ed was published, the Ohio newspapers had not even bothered to mention the ballot access improvements contained in that bill.
The op-ed is authored by Law Professor Mark Brown, who in the last few years has become one of the leading ballot access attorneys in the nation. He is currently representing minor parties in pending lawsuits in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania.
On November 5, the city of Central Falls, Rhode Island, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, to overturn the U.S. District Court opinion in Fontes v City of Central Falls. The U.S. District Court, on October 8, had struck down a city ordinance that says if a voter signs for one candidate, and later signs for another candidate for the same office, the signature that counts is the one that was submitted first. The case in the 1st Circuit is Fontes v City of Central Falls, 09-2516.
Ironically, Rhode Island election laws, like the election laws of most states, have no prohibition on a voter signing for two different candidates for the same office. In other words, the city of Central Falls imposed a ballot access restriction that does not exist in state law in that state. This particular lawsuit had arisen when Hipolito Fontes had gone door-to-door to get the needed 200 valid signatures to run for Mayor in a non-partisan election. Campaigners for the incumbent Mayor, who was the only other candidate, followed Fontes and asked the same voters to sign the Mayor’s petition as well. Because enough voters signed both petitions, and because the Mayor turned his petition in first, Fontes only had 197 valid signatures and would not have been on the ballot except for the U.S. District Court’s order, putting him on the ballot. Fontes lost the election, receiving 426 votes; the incumbent received 1,495 votes.
On November 16, attorneys for the state of South Carolina filed this brief in the lawsuit South Carolina Green Party v South Carolina State Election Commission, pending in the 4th circuit.
The Green Party nominated Eugene Platt for state legislature on May 3, 2008, at a convention. The next month, Platt was defeated for the Democratic Party nomination for the same seat. South Carolina permits fusion, so Platt had been hoping to be the nominee of both parties in November. Because he lost the Democratic nomination in June, the Green Party nomination was considered void by the state, and Platt was omitted from the November ballot entirely. The state’s brief mostly ignores Platt’s strongest precedent, called California Democratic Party v Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court 2000 decision that said it is unconstitutional for a state to force a party to let outsiders help determine its nominee. Platt argues that since the Democratic Party was permitted to cancel out his Green Party nomination, the South Carolina system (as appled to instances when a minor party nominates first, before a major party nominating event) violates the principles set forth in California Democratic Party v Jones.
The state argues that Platt knew he was jeopardizing his Green Party nomination by running in the Democratic primary, and if he wanted to guarantee his Green Party nomination he should have avoided seeking the Democratic nomination. One wonders, what is the purpose of South Carolina’s fusion law, if not to encourage (rather than discourage) candidates from trying to use it.
The state’s brief also has a factual error on page 23. It says the U.S. Taxpayers Party nominated Pat Buchanan for president in 1996. This is not true. The U.S. Taxpayers Party only held one presidential convention in 1996, in San Diego, in August 1996, and it nominated Howard Phillips for President.
On November 16, a Minnesota Public Radio/University of Minnesota poll was released, showing that 56% of Minneapolis voters say they prefer Instant Runoff Voting to the old two-round system. Minneapolis used Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections for the first time on November 3, 2009. See this story.
