The September 14 U.S. edition of Metro has this story about Frances Villar’s campaign for Mayor of New York city. Villar is the candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Metro is an international daily newspaper published in 100 cities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In the U.S. it exists in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
The September 14 issue of the Patriot-News, the daily newspaper of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, explains why so few votes get cast in the county that contains Harrisburg, Dauphin County. See this article. Dauphin County uses Electec 1242B vote-counting machines. A voter who wishes to cast a write-in vote must first find the write-in button for the particular office. The voter pushes it, and then sees another button in another part of the machine that then begins flashing a red light. The voter pushes that button next, and that opens a small shutter, exposing a piece of paper within. The voter write-ins in that shutter, and must manually close the shutter.
In November 2006, Carl Romanelli, the write-in candidate for U.S. Senate for the Green Party, was only credited with 9 write-ins in Dauphin County, and the other statewide write-in candidates for the Green, Libertarian and Constitution Parties were not credited with any write-ins in Dauphin County.
The Patriot-News wrote this story because the incumbent Mayor of Harrisburg, Stephen Reed, is pondering whether to run a write-in campaign in November 2009 in order to stay in office. He lost the May 2009 Democratic primary.
Jay Jacobs, who will soon take up his post as state chair of the New York Democratic Party, says he tends to want to make it illegal for two political parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, according to this Newsday article.
The article does not mention that in 1912, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the State Constitution protects the right of two political parties to jointly nominate the same candidate.
Jacobs complains that the 3 qualified minor parties of New York state (Conservative, Working Families, and Independence) don’t run enough of their own members for public office. However, there are many changes in state election law that could be made, to increase the number of candidates running for office in the general election. New York state could alter its definition of “political party” so that parties like the Green, Libertarian, and Constitution Parties could enjoy that status. Those parties would tend to mostly run their own members for public office. New York state could also alter the order in which parties are listed on the ballot, so that any party appearing on the ballot has an equal random shot at appearing on the top line, as many states do. That would tend to decrease the influence of the older qualified minor parties, relative to newer ones.
The Ventura County Star of Ventura, California, has this interesting article on how Californians can go about applying to be on the elite commission that will draw state legislative district boundaries in 2011. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link. Four of the fourteen commissioners must be people who are not, and have not, been registered Republicans or registered Democrats.
J. B. Williams, a U.S. resident who blogs for the Canada Free Press blog, has posted what he says are two different versions of the certification prepared by officials of the Democratic National Convention of 2008, immediately at the close of the convention. Both versions, as shown on his website, are signed by the Chair of the National Convention, the Secretary of the National Convention, and a Colorado notary public (the convention was in Denver, Colorado). The purpose of these certifications is to send official notification to elections officials in each state, plus the District of Columbia, advising them officially of the names and addresses of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees.
One version has the language that the Democratic nominees “are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution”, and the other version omits this language. Williams says the second version was sent out to each state election official. However, a comment on his website says that the first version was sent to the Hawaii elections officials.
Williams posted a copy of the 2008 Republican certification, which contains language that John McCain and Sarah Palin meet the constitutional qualifications. Ballot Access News happens to have copies of the 1980 certifications of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and the 1980 certifications do not contain any reference to the candidates being qualified under the Constitution.
These certifications are not forms prepared by any state. No state requires any particular type of form for this purpose. However, about half the states do require the qualified parties to notify them officially of whom their presidential electors are pledged to vote for in the Electoral College. In the remaining states, the law is silent, and presumably state elections officials would rely on the newspapers if they didn’t receive such certifications. It is not known when the national conventions first started the habit of preparing them and sending them to each state. Probably one of the reasons they were first prepared was so that elections officials in each state would print the name of the candidates on their ballots precisely as the candidates wished their names to appear. There are frequently ambiguities about the form of candidates’ names, such as whether the candidate wants his or her middle name to appear, or to use a middle initial. Jimmy Carter was keen that all states print “Jimmy Carter” on the ballot, not “James Earl Carter”, for example.
The only significance of the fact that two versions of the 2008 Democratic certifications were prepared, is that apparently someone in the party decided not to include the language about the candidates being qualified under the Constitution, and went to the bother of preparing a second certification the same day without that language. The certifications are prepared in great haste. The Texas certification, in particular, was late, under Texas election law, because the Texas deadline for receiving certification was the day before the convention chose its nominees. However, Texas officials excused the lateness of the filing.
Here is a link to CanadaFreePress and J. B. Williams’ blog post, showing both versions of the 2008 Democratic certification, and the 2008 Republican certification.
