Hearing Held in Maine for Independent Senate Candidate Ballot Access

Posted on by September 14, 2008
Reply

On September 12, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock held a 90-minute hearing in Dobson v Dunlap, 1:08-cv-00292. The issue is whether Laurie Dobson should be on the ballot as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. She obtained 4,000 valid signatures, and submitted them to the town clerks by the legal deadline, May 27. The law also said that the town clerks had to finish checking the signatures by June 2, but in Dobson’s case, some of the town clerks did not comply. Dobson argues that she should not be punished because the town clerks did not obey the law. Judge Woodcock is expected to rule on September 15, although his ruling may be limited to deciding whether to halt the ballot printing. If he does halt the ballot printing, that would give more time for the eventual decision on whether Dobson’s name should be on the ballot. The lawsuit was not filed until September 9.

How Will History Record the Republican National Convention Rollcall for President?

Posted on by September 13, 2008
Reply

Traditionally, historians record the rollcall vote for president at major party national conventions. However, that job is getting more and more difficult, as shown by what happened at the September 3 Republican convention. TheGreenPapers has an interesting account of the true rollcall in St. Paul. The votes from the various state delegations included 15 votes for Ron Paul, and 2 votes for Mitt Romney. However, the presiding officers of that convention did not repeat the votes for Paul (although they did acknowledge the 2 votes for Romney), and it seems that no official record was made of the Paul votes. Here are the details from TheGreenPapers. Scroll down to the notes.

Past Republican conventions did keep a tally, even when the votes were one-sided. The runner-ups at each convention during the past 40 years were officially credited with this number of votes: 1968 Nelson Rockefeller 277; 1972 Pete McCloskey 1; 1976 Ronald Reagan 1,070; 1980 John Anderson 37; 1984 unanimous; 1988 Pat Buchanan 18; 1992 Pat Buchanan 43; 2000 unanimous; 2004 unanimous. Thanks to the Rhodes Cook Letter for this past data.

It is true that Ron Paul did not meet the convention’s qualifications to be nominated. That required majority support in at least 5 state delegations. Specifically, a candidate had to submit a petition in order to be considered nominated, signed by a majority of delegates from 5 states. However, there is a distinction to be made between the ability of a candidate to be placed in nomination, and the ability of a delegate to vote freely for the candidate of his or her choice, and to have that vote recorded.

This year’s Democratic convention tally was Obama 1,549.5; Clinton 341.5. Only the states above New York in the alphabet cast votes.

Tennessee Democrats Invalidate State Senate Primary Because Republicans Participated in that Primary

Posted on by September 13, 2008
Reply

On September 13, the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee voted to invalidate the results of the August primary in the 22nd State Senate district, on the grounds that Republican Party sympathizers may have altered the outcome of that primary.

At the August primary, the vote had been very close. Incumbent Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita defeated Tim Barnes by only 19 votes. Research showed that more than 700 voters in that primary were people who had chosen to vote in the Republican primary in each of the previous seven election years. Tennessee, like most states in the south, does not have registration by party. Instead, Tennessee has an open primary, in which any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot.

Normally no one would have done the research about who voted in a party primary, but Democratic Party officials were hostile to Senator Kurita because she had voted for a Republican, instead of a Democrat, to lead the State Senate last year. If Senator Kurita sues to overturn the ruling, the lawsuit will be a milestone in determining the power of political parties to control their own nominations procedure. Thanks to Clifford Thies for this news.