This October 5 story in Newark, New Jersey’s daily newspaper has a picture of the November 3, 2009 ballot from Warren County. It shows how the Democratic nominees are in one row headed “Democratic”; the Republican nominees are in another row labeled “Republican”; and the other ten gubernatorial candidates are squeezed into a third row.

The news in the story is that Warren County has decided to change the heading of the third row from “Non-Partisan” to “Nominations by Petition.” Click on the link inside the story that says “her county’s ballot” to enlarge the ballot. The change was made after the Libertarian Party nominee, Ken Kaplan, complained. However, the change does little to fix the basic unfairness of the ballot design. New Jersey and New Hampshire are the only states in the nation that gives party column headings to the qualified parties, but not to the unqualified parties.

Each New Jersey county is permitted to design its ballot in its own way. A few New Jersey counties do not even use party columns. Instead, they simply list all the candidates for any particular office in a list, although they always print the Democratic and Republican nominees at the top of that list.

Note that the Warren County ballot puts Chris Daggett, the leading independent gubernatorial candidate, second from the end of the candidates in the “Non-Partisan” column.

On October 1, U.S. District Court Judge William Smith heard arguments in Fontes v City of Central Falls, Rhode Island. See this story. The issue is whether the city can disqualify signatures on a petition if the same voter had also signed for another candidate for the same office. Petition forms do not ask the voter to indicate a date next to his or her signature, so the first candidate who files gets to count the signatures of voters who sign two petitions. In this particular case, the plaintiff-candidate, Hipolito Fontes, says when he was collecting signatures, he was followed by canvassers for his only opponent, the incumbent Mayor, and those canvassers asked the same voters to also sign the Mayor’s petitions.

On the first day that petitions could be submitted, Fontes says, the Board of Elections allowed the Mayor to submit his petitions first by letting him into the office before the office was officially open. Fontes needed 200 valid signatures but was told he only had 197 valid. The judge promised a decision by October 9.

Professor James Bennett’s new book, “Not Invited to the Party: How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold” will be released on October 13, 2009. It is hardcover, 211 pages, and will sell for $24.50.

Professor Bennett is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and has published at least 18 other books. He wrote an earlier version of “Not Invited to the Party”, which was released a year ago. However, that book was only 141 pages and sold for $99, so it didn’t get the attention that the new version will receive. Last year’s version was “Stifling Political Competition: How Government Has Rigged the System to Benefit Demopublicans and Exclude Third Parties.”