On January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court unsurprisingly denied Phil Berg’s request for a stay, in Berg v Obama, 08A505. That is the last aspect of that particular case that had been in the U.S. Supreme Court. Phil Berg has been the nation’s most energetic proponent of the idea that the Courts should examine President Obama’s qualifications.
Eight South Carolina Representatives have introduced H3140, a bill to set up partisan registration in that state. The sponsors are Garry Smith (R-Simpsonville), Dan Hamilton (R-Taylors), Wendy Nanney (R-Greenville), Eric Bedingfield (R-Mauldin), James Harrison (R-Columbia), William Wylie (R-Simpsonville), Michael Pitts (R-Laurens), and Jim Merrill (R-Charleston).
In the last twenty years, the only two states that have added registration by party are Rhode Island and Utah.
Scotusblog has this commentary about the possibility that someone might want to sue over the fact that the words for the swearing-in oath for President Obama weren’t precisely in the order specified in the Constitution. The piece concludes that no one would have standing. Other stories in newspapers quote some legal experts as recommending that the oath be readministered. See this San Francisco Chronicle article. The redo could be done in private, and some experts even speculated that it has already been redone in private. Thanks to How Appealing for the links. UPDATE: on January 21, President Obama took the oath again, in a private ceremony. See this article.
The Pennsylvania “Voters Choice Act”, which improves ballot access for minor parties and independent candidates, has not yet been introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature. However, the Senate sponsor of the proposed bill, Senator Mike Folmer (R-Lebanon) has already identified six other Senators who have said they will co-sponsor the bill. They include one Democrat and five Republicans.
Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed has written a proposed bill that clarifies some problems with the existing “top-two” primary system. The bill defines a qualified major party to be a group that polled at least 1% for president in the last presidential election.
Existing law says a qualified major party is one that polled 5% for any statewide office at the last election in which a statewide office was on the ballot. That existing definition is no longer workable, however, because the “top-two” initiative passed by the voters in November 2004 says that parties don’t have nominees any longer, except for president. Under the existing law, there wouldn’t be any qualified major parties in Washington state after the U.S. Senate election in November 2010, because there would be no party nominees in that election.
The proposed bill also defines qualified minor party to be a group that submits a petition of 100 voters by the first Monday in March, asking that the group be recognized as a party.
Washington state primary and general election ballots, under the “top-two” system, give each candidate a chance to say which party he or she prefers. Assuming this proposed bill passes, candidates will not be able to say they prefer just any group; they can only say they prefer a qualified major party or a qualified minor party. In the 2008 elections, some candidates said they preferred “parties” that clearly aren’t organizations, such as the Salmon Yoga Party or the GOP Party.
One might wonder what difference it makes for a group to be a qualified major party. The answer is that qualified major parties get their own presidential primary, and they are permitted to elect party officers in the September primary. Also their presidential nominee is put on the November ballot automatically with no petition needed.
