The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma has set a status conference in Bob Barr’s ballot access lawsuit, for October 2, at 10:30 a.m. The case had been filed on July 17, 2008.
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Alabama does not permit persons convicted of crimes of “moral turpitude” to register to vote, but there is no law in Alabama that prevents registration or voting for persons convicted of “non-moral turpitude crime.” Earlier this year, Reverend Kenneth Glasgow began visiting jails in Alabama, to distribute voter registration postcard forms to people in jail who either have not yet been convicted of any crime, or who were convicted of crimes that do not involve “moral turpitide.” The largest bloc of people in jail who are eligible to register are 6,000 people convicted of simple drug possession crimes.
The Commissioner of the Alabama Corrections Department initially permitted Glasgow’s activity, but he changed his mind and barred his visits. The lawsuit is Glasgow v Allen, 2:08-cv-801, U.S. District Court, Middle District. It was filed September 30 with the assistance of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Thanks to Ed Still’s VoteLawBlog for this news. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge W. Keith Watkins, a Bush, Jr. appointee.
On September 30, the 5th circuit refused to order Mississippi to print Brian Moore’s name on the ballot. He is the Socialist Party presdential candidate, and he had been nominated by the ballot-qualified Natural Law Party. The party submitted the names of its candidates for presidential elector at 5 p.m. on the deadline day. The office personnel refused to attend to the person bringing in the paperwork, and then locked the door and chased him out. He left the paperwork outside the office, next to the door. The Mississippi law governing the deadline only specifies a date, not any particular hour. Moore v Barbour, 08-60899. The three judges were Carolyn King, James Dennis, and Priscilla Owen. King and Dennis were also on the earlier 5th circuit panel that denied relief to Bob Barr in Louisiana. They did not write anything in Moore’s case except “Denied.”
Late on the evening of September 30, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 583, which establishes a pilot project for public funding in 2014. It only applies to the Secretary of State’s race. It requires Democrats and Republicans to collect 7,500 qualifying contributions in order to qualify for public funding. Independent candidates must collect 15,000 qualifying contributions in order to qualify for any funding. In the history of campaign finance records, no candidate for Secretary of State has ever received contributions from as many as 10,000 individuals. However, minor party candidates who receive qualifying contributions from 3,750 individuals could qualify for a one-fourth share of the amount of public funding that Democrats and Republicans get.
The California Clean Elections Organization did an extraordinarily good job of rallying support for this bill. The bill was opposed by virtually all Republicans in the legislature. This is the first time Governor Schwarzenegger has signed any election law bill that was opposed by virtually all California Republican legislators. Another hurdle the bill faced was that the California Fair Political Practices Commission, a non-partisan body, had formally asked for a veto, since it said the bill doesn’t have a large enough appropriation for administration of the program. Finally, the last time public funding was on the ballot, in 2006, it had only received a “Yes” vote of 26%. The voters will need to approve the provisions of AB 583 before it can go into effect. That vote will be June 8, 2010.
On the evening of September 30, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 37, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. His veto message said the voters should vote on the idea.