The U.S. Supreme Court clerk has revealed that the Court will not issue any full opinions until January 11, 2010. Election law fans are looking forward to the Court’s campaign finance decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
On December 11, Dan Kairis defeated a challenge to his petition to get on the Green Party primary ballot. The challenge had been filed by a Democrat. Kairis is seeking the Green Party’s nomination for U.S. House in the 14th district. Thanks to Green Party Watch for this news.
This AP story, dated December 11, discusses the push by retired Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Sandra Day O’Connor and many others to persuade states not to elect state court judges any longer. One reason is that when judges must be elected, they need campaign contributions. That, in turn, means that they appear indebted to the people who give them large campaign contributions, and sometimes those individuals are in court before those judges.
It does seem to be true that appointed judges do a better job than elected judges. The best state court decisions involving constitutional issues concerning the treatment of minor party and independent candidates, during the last fifteen years, have come from New Jersey state courts. All New Jersey state court judges are appointed. New Jersey trial level courts and mid-level appellate courts have struck down numerous laws that discriminated against minor parties. Laws have been struck down that banned voters from registering into unqualified parties, laws that inhibited who can circulate petitions, and laws that treated qualified parties more favorably than unqualified parties in matters of campaign finance.
By contrast, the worst state court decisions involving those issues in the last fifteen years have come from the Pennsylvania state courts. All Pennsylvania state court judges are elected on a partisan basis. Pennsylvania state courts during the period 2004 through the present have consistently upheld a unique system in which candidates who try to petition, and fail to get enough valid signatures, can be charged with up to $80,000 in court fees.
Pennsylvania state courts also removed a Reform Party candidate in 2003 from the ballot under a law that had already been declared unconstitutional by the 3rd circuit in 1999. The state court said, “Decisions of intermediate federal courts are not binding on state courts.” However, when a federal court declared a state law unconstitutional, and no appeal is taken, that law is void and cannot be enforced.
And, Pennsylvania state courts are the only courts in the nation that consistently uphold a county distribution requirement for statewide candidate petitions, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against such requirements and reiterated that decision, Moore v Ogilvie, in Bush v Gore.
Bill Shireman, a well-known writer and speaker about the environment, on business, and on the future, has this interesting and original commentary on the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, posted at the Huffington Post.
New Hampshire Representative Joel Winters has introduced HB 1264. It makes thoughtful improvements to the ability of new and previously unqualified parties to get on the ballot.
Existing law says defines “party” to be a group that polled at least 4% for either U.S. Senate or Governor at the last election. All parties nominate by primary. A group that is not a qualified party can qualify to have all its nominees placed on the November ballot via a single petition, if that petition is signed by 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. The 3% petition has existed in the law since 1996, but is so difficult it has only been used once, in 2000, by the Libertarian Party. Furthermore, the status of a group that successfully completes the 3% petition is ambiguous; it isn’t really a qualified party and voters can’t register into it and be tallied as members.
HB 1264 sets up a two-tier system of qualified parties, something that 16 other states already have. Under HB 1264, a party that polled 2% for either U.S. Senate or Governor, or which has at least 3,000 registered members, or which submits a petition of 5,000 signatures, is a qualified party. It would nominate by convention. Primaries would be reserved for parties that had met the 4% vote test that already exists in the law. This “two-tier” idea, in which there are two types of qualified political party (smaller ones nominating by convention, and larger ones nominating by primary) is also used in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The “two-tier” idea saves taxpayer money. It avoids the expense of the government putting on a primary for small qualified parties. Because it relieves the small qualified parties from submitting petitions, it also saves election administrators from the expense of checking the validity of petitions.
Another ballot access improvement bill has been introduced by Representative Shawn Jasper. It is HB 1188, a much shorter and simpler bill. It merely cuts the existing 3% petition for a group to place all its nominees on the general election ballot, to 1.5%.
