Alameda County Republican Chair Tries to Invalidate Election Results for Party Office on Ballot Access Grounds

Posted on by October 27, 2008
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California election law requires candidates for partisan public office, or for party office, to have been registered members of their own party for at least three months, before they file in their own party’s primary. Also they must not have been a member of any other qualified party for the preceding year.

In this year’s June primary for party office, some candidates for Republican County Central Committee were placed on the ballot, even though they did not meet the prior affiliation requirement. They were elected. Now, the chair of the Alameda County Republican Central Committee is trying to get them removed. The case was filed July 25, 2008 and is Cummings v Stanley, Alameda County Superior Court, no. 08-400144. Here is a San Francisco Chronicle story about the case. A hearing will be held November 12.

Generally, when candidates who were elected were then charged with having been placed on the ballot improperly, courts hold that the matter is moot. On the other hand, there have been instances when an initiative passed, and was then held to have been placed on the ballot improperly, and sometimes courts have then invalidated the initiative.

U.S. Supreme Court May Decide Whether to Hear Ohio Case on Paying Petitioners per Signature

Posted on by October 27, 2008
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The U.S. Supreme Court has put Ohio v Citizens for Tax Reform on its conference agenda for November 7, 2008. The decision as to whether the Court will hear the case will probably be public on November 10, 2008. The case concerns whether the Constitution protects the right of people to pay petition circulators on a per-signature basis. The 6th circuit had struck down Ohio’s ban on that method of payment.

NAACP Lawsuit Over Emergency Paper Ballots in Pennsylvania has Hearing on October 28

Posted on by October 27, 2008
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A U.S. District Court in Philadelphia will hold an evidentiary hearing on October 28, at 1 p.m, in NAACP v Cortes, no. 08-cv-5048. This is the case filed October 23 that seeks to compel elections officials to provide emergency paper ballots in precincts, if half or more of the electronic vote-counting machines in that precinct break down. Current policy is that precincts will not be supplied with emergency paper ballots until all the machines break down.

Massachusetts State Senator Runs for Re-Election as a Write-in Candidate

Posted on by October 27, 2008
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Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, a Democrat from Boston, was defeated in the September 16 primary by 213 votes. The vote in the primary was Sonia Chang-Diaz 9,071; Wilkerson 8,858. Now Wilkerson is attempting to retain her seat by running as a write-in candidate in November against Chang-Diaz. There is no Republican in the race, but the Socialist Workers Party has a candidate on the ballot in this race, William Leonard.

Both Wilkerson and Chang-Diaz know quite a bit about running write-in campaigns, since they were both write-in candidates in the 2006 Democratic primary for that same seat. In the Democratic primary in 2006, no one had appeared on the ballot, and everyone was a write-in candidate. In that 2006 primary, Wilkerson had 6,478 write-ins, and her closest competitor, Chang-Diaz, had 5,711 write-ins.

Georgia Secretary of State Tries to Remove Democratic Nominee for Public Service Commissioner from November Ballot

Posted on by October 27, 2008
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Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel has asked the Georgia Supreme Court to remove Jim Powell from the November ballot. Powell won the August Democratic primary for one of the statewide partisan races for Public Service Commissioner. The Georgia Supreme Court heard oral arguments on October 20, and has not ruled yet (as of the morning of October 27). The Secretary of State believes that Powell has not lived in his district for an entire year before filing for the office. The case is Handel v Powell, S09A-0074. At the oral argument, some of the justices expressed doubt that it is possible to remove anyone from the ballot at this late date, since early voting already started.