An initiative, asking the voters of Cincinnati if they wish to use the Single Transferable Vote system for electing city council members, will be on the November 2008 ballot. The initiative sponsors were told on August 27 that they have enough valid signatures. “Single Transferable Vote” is the term for Instant-Runoff Voting when multiple winners are to be elected. For some reason, the newspapers in Cincinnati call it “Proportional Representation.”
On August 27, the Ohio Green Party filed its lawsuit get on the ballot. McKinney v Brunner, U.S. District Court, 2:08-cv-819. As regular readers of this blog know, the federal courts in Ohio earlier put the Libertarian Party and the Socialist Party on the Ohio ballot, since each party showed it has some support, and the state has no valid law in place regulating which parties should be on the ballot.
On August 27, Patty Lovaas filed a federal lawsuit, challenging Montana’s March petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates. The case is Lovaas v Johnson, Missoula, 9:08-cv-127. The case was assigned to Judge Donald Molloy, a Clinton appointee. Lovaas is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate from Montana.
The U.S. District Court in Butte has been asked to set a hearing date to consider injunctive relief against that deadline, on behalf of another independent candidate for U.S. Senate, Steve Kelly. That case, Kelly v Johnson, was filed in April 2008.
On August 26, the Constitution Party submitted another 8,000 signatures, to supplement the 22,000 they submitted on the legal deadline, August 1. Not surprisingly, the Pennsylvania Elections Department rejected the additional signatures. The requirement is 24,666 signatures.
The Constitution Party will sue to overturn the August 1 deadline, on two grounds: (1) it is too early and violates Anderson v Celebrezze; (2) the August 1 deadline was never passed or created by the Pennsylvania state legislature. It was created in 1984 in an effort by the Secretary of State to settle two lawsuits, filed by the Libertarian Party and the Communist Party. The statutory deadline is in May, but the state in the 1984 agreement promised to accept petitions up until August 1. Under the federal court ruling in Ohio last month, ballot access laws for president are not valid unless they were passed by a state legislature. Article II of the U.S. Constitution says, “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.”
Texas has an August 26 deadline for declared write-ins to file to have their write-ins counted. Presidential candidates meeting the deadline are: Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Brian Moore, Alan Keyes, Jonathan Allen, and Thaddeus Hill.
Although Chuck Baldwin appears not to have filed, it is difficult to imagine how Texas could refuse his late filing, given that the Republican and Democratic Parties failed to meet the parallel deadline for ballot-listed parties to certify their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. UPDATE: the Texas Constitution Party did file the write-in documents and can prove it.
