Earlier this month, the California Moderate Party created a webpage for itself and says it will attempt to qualify for the 2010 ballot. It needs 88,991 registered members by January 6, 2010. The party’s webpage is www.camod.org.

The founder, or one of the founders, is Ash Roughani of Sacramento, who has ties to both the United States and Iran. The party’s webpage does not make it clear if it wants people to register as a member of the “Moderate Party” or the “California Moderate Party”. UPDATE: as commenter #1 says, the party wants people to register “California Moderate”.

On Saturday, July 11, C-SPAN 2 will carry a broadcast of Theresa Amato discussing her book “Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a 2-Party Tyranny”. The event is happening at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Literature Fest. The interview lasts just under one hour and seems to be combined with another author, Rick Perlstein, author of “Nixonland.” See here for more detail. There are seven hours of interviews and the Amato-Perlstein one occupies the sixth hour.

On July 10, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1091, one of two omnibus election law bills that passed the legislature this year. Among other things, it moves the independent presidential petition deadline from early June to early September. The new deadline will be 60 days before the November election.

The bill also makes it legal for out-of-state circulators to work on independent presidential petitions, but no other kind of petitions.

Arizona now is tied for having the second latest deadline for independent presidential candidates. Only Vermont has a later deadline, and North Dakota is tied with Arizona. If this bill had been in effect in 2008, it is likely that the Constitution Party’s presidential candidate, Chuck Baldwin, could have qualified in Arizona. The only independent presidential candidate who actually qualified in Arizona in 2008 was Ralph Nader (the Green and Libertarian Parties were ballot-qualified, so their presidential candidates had no need to use the independent procedure). The Arizona independent procedure permits use of a party label.

Arizona made this change because Nader won his lawsuit (filed in 2004) in late 2008, in the 9th circuit.

Arizona is the 4th state in which a state has changed its statutory election law because of a ballot access lawsuit won by Ralph Nader.