Last week, both sides in the Montana ballot access case filed their briefs. Kelly v McCulloch, cv-08-25-BU, challenges the March petition deadline for independent candidates (for office other than president). The deadline had been in June, until 2007, when the legislature moved it to March. Here is the brief of the ACLU. Here is the state’s brief. The ACLU brief is 34 pages long, but has almost 100 pages of exhibits in addition.
The League of Women Voters is holding its state convention May 1-2, at Bowdoin College, Brunswick. The speaker for May 2, at 1 p.m. through 2:30 p.m., is Theresa Amato, Ralph Nader’s campaign manager in 2000 and 2004. Because Amato is about to publish a book about Nader’s 2004 campaign, focusing on the historically unprecedented attempts by the Democratic Party to prevent voters from voting for Nader, it is virtually certain that Amato’s talk will focus on ballot access. The book, to be published soon by The New Press, is titled, “Grand Illusion: the Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny.”
Alternet on May 2 posted this first-person account of the March 21, 2009 bus tour of wealthy business executives’ homes in Connecticut, sponsored by the Connecticut Working Families Party. Mark Ames wrote the piece, and he is a very good writer. His title is, “What Happens When Angry Citizens Crash the Gates of America’s CEO Class?” The subtitle is, “They chicken out at the last minute. Recounting the doomed bus tour of AIG executives’ posh homes in Connecticut.”
Alternet on May 2 posted this first-person account of the March 21, 2009 bus tour of wealthy business executives’ homes in Connecticut, sponsored by the Connecticut Working Families Party. Mark Ames wrote the piece, and he is a very good writer. His title is, “What Happens When Angry Citizens Crash the Gates of America’s CEO Class?” The subtitle is, “They chicken out at the last minute. Recounting the doomed bus tour of AIG executives’ posh homes in Connecticut.”
Ballot Access News has just learned that the South Carolina Election Commission adopted a policy in 2008 that does not permit political parties that nominate by convention to nominate anyone who didn’t file a declaration of candidacy with that party in the early spring.
South Carolina law does not have any such requirement, and permits parties that nominate by convention to choose nominees as late as August of an election year.
It is possible that one of South Carolina’s ballot-qualified parties will file a lawsuit against this new policy, during 2010.
