On August 21, a County Commissioner in La Plata County, Colorado, switched her registration from “Democratic” to “independent”. See this story. Colorado, like most states, has partisan elections for county office. The Commissioner who switched, Joelle Riddle, says she believes county office elections should be non-partisan. She has not said if she will run for re-election in 2010 as an independent.
The U.S. District Court Judge who has jurisdiction of the lawsuit Barnett v Obama will hold a hearing on September 8, in Santa Ana, California, to decide if Markham Robinson and Wiley Drake may re-join the lawsuit. Robinson is the state chair of the faction of the California American Independent Party that supported Alan Keyes last year, and Drake was Keyes’ vice-presidential running mate in California last year.
Robinson and Drake were part of the original lawsuit, which argues that President Obama does not meet the constitutional qualifications to be president. They allege that when they tried to replace their original attorney with another attorney, the original attorney improperly filed papers with the court, saying Robinson and Drake no longer wish to be plaintiffs. They do wish to continue being plaintiffs, and will ask the judge to restore them as plaintiffs.
Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle Political Writer, published this article on August 21, titled “State GOP May Restrict Primary to Party Members.” The article says that the state party convention on September 25-27 will consider changing the rule that now permits independent voters to vote for all public office (except president) in Republican primaries.
It is true that the idea of excluding independents is on the agenda, but the sponsor of the idea, Jon Fleischman, one of the 9 vice-chairs of the state party, has been introducing his idea at each of the preceding ten state conventions, and each time the party votes against the idea, and votes to continue letting independents vote. It is not likely that the Republican state convention in Indian Wells next month will exclude independent voters from the non-presidential Republican primaries.
On August 18, the New Mexico Attorney General filed this 37-page brief in response to the ballot access lawsuit Woodruff v Herrera, filed by the Libertarian and Green Parties on May 7.
The parties had complained that, starting in 2006, the Secretary of State began omitting a straight-ticket device for the qualified minor parties, even while continuing to place a straight-ticket device on the ballot for the Democrats and Republicans. The Attorney General’s response to this is to skirt the issue entirely, and instead to defend the practice of not using a straight-ticket device for independent candidates.
Another strong complaint from the parties is that the Secretary of State refuses to furnish the parties with the blank petition forms, so they could be circulating the petition to re-qualify the parties. The Attorney General again side-steps that issue, but talking as though the complaint were about the failure of the Secretary of State to furnish the separate petition blanks for candidates. New Mexico requires one petition to qualify the party and then completely separate petitions for each of the party’s nominees, and the Attorney General’s brief ignores the party petitions.
New Mexico is in the 10th circuit, and the 10th circuit already ruled that candidates for Congress need not be registered voters. The parties complained about New Mexico’s law that requires all candidates to be registered voters. The Attorney General handled that by alleging that the 10th circuit opinion, Campbell v Davidson, only applies to independent candidates. Since the 10th circuit opinion was based on the wide-ranging principle that states cannot add to the constitutional qualifications to run for Congress, the Attorney General’s interpretation of Campbell v Davidson seems unduly narrow.
On Monday, August 24, a Tulsa County District Court will hear Eagleton v City of Tulsa, cj2009-5920. The issue is whether an initiative petition is valid. The initiative would ask the voters if they wish to convert Tulsa city elections from partisan elections, to non-partisan elections.
The challenge to the validity of the petition consists of two issues: (1) whether the petition contained a clause warning voters against signing false signatures; (2) whether the petition needs 3,427 valid signatures, or 19,336 valid signatures. The petition has 6,675 valid signatures. The uncertainty over the required number depends on whether the “last preceding general election” is the April 2006 election, or the April 2008 election. The April 2008 election had a very low turnout. It was for city council districts in part of the city, plus it had citywide ballot questions. The challenger says the April 2008 election shouldn’t count, and the city should look back to the April 2006 election, when citywide offices (not just district offices) were on the ballot.
