On August 29, the California Senate passed AB 583, which sets up a pilot program for public funding. Specifically, it provides that in 2014, candidates for Secretary of State could receive public funding. Democrats and Republicans would need qualifying contributions from 7,500 people; independent candidates would need such contributions from 15,000 people. The bill is probably unconstitutional on that score, under this year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision Davis v Federal Election Commission.

AB 583 must now return to the Assembly, since the Senate version provides that funding for the program be from state income taxpayer voluntary check-offs (which would add to the taxpayers’ bill), whereas the Assembly had a different funding scheme. AB 583 passed the Senate 21-18. It needed 21 votes in order to pass.

On August 29, a federal court in Maine ruled that since Herb Hoffman had lost in the Maine state courts, he cannot now go to federal court. So injunctive relief was denied. The federal case is Hoffman v Dunlap, 08-cv-279. Hoffman is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate whose petition was signed by more than 4,000 validly registered voters (the requirement is 4,000 signatures). But the Maine Supreme Judicial Court had eliminated all the signatures on three pages, because three voters who signed the petition said Hoffman wasn’t watching when they signed. Hoffman didn’t need those three signatures, but he didn’t have enough signatures when the three entire sheets were eliminated.

On August 29, Faye Coffield, an independent candidate for U.S. House in Georgia’s 4th district, filed a ballot access case in federal court. Coffield v Handel, 1:08-cv-2755, northern district.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s 5% (of the number of registered voters) petition requirement in 1971. However, at the time, the Court said that since a statewide petition had succeeded in both 1968 and 1970, the procedure couldn’t be that difficult. However, for U.S. House, no petitioning candidate has met the 5% requirement since 1964, when an independent did it. Back then, the petitions were due in October and weren’t checked. Also U.S. House boundaries did not split counties. It is always tough to get good petition validity when U.S. House districts are as complicated as they are in Georgia these days. Most voters don’t know which U.S. House district they live in, so the validity rate for such petitions is poor.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1974 that “there is no litmus test” to determine if a ballot access law is constitutional or not, but said one way to know is to see how often the law is used. Justice Scalia’s concurrence in Crawford v Marion County Election Board earlier this year again mentioned that 1974 test.