Bob Barr was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, on June 29. Thanks to ThirdPartyWatch, here is the transcript.
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Vince Miller died on June 28, 2008. He was 69. He had founded the Libertarian International in 1980. In 1989 it had been merged with the Society for Individual Liberty, to create the International Society for Individual Liberty. It held annual conferences in sites all over the world. See this obituary by Eric Garris. His death is shocking, since he had attended the Libertarian national convention just a month before he died.
Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have now run editorials, attacking the U.S. Supreme Court decision Davis v Federal Election Commission. The Post editorial is here; the Times editorial is here. Neither editorial mentions that the U.S. promised to “provide the necessary legal guarantees to enable candidates to compete with each other on a basis of equal treatment before the law” when we signed the Copenhagen Meeting Document (part of the Helsinki Accords) in 1990. Nor does either editorial mention that, if the “Millionaire’s Amendment” had been made applicable to presidential candidates, individuals could only have contributed $2,300 to Hillary Clinton, whereas those same individuals would have been free to contribute $6,900 to Barack Obama. It happens that Congress didn’t make the “millionaire’s amendment” apply to presidential candidates, but it could have. Clinton spent more than $350,000 of her own money on her own campaign, whereas Obama did not. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s electionlawblog for the links.
U.S. Senator Orrin G. Hatch has this essay in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, decrying the policy that denies District of Columbia residents any voting representation in Congress. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link. Hatch also gives the legal rationale for granting voting rights to the District without the need for a constitutional amendment.
California has very difficult procedures for independent candidates to get on the ballot. No independent has qualified for any regularly-scheduled partisan office since 2000, and none has qualified for statewide office since 1992. This year, two independent candidates are making serious attempts to complete the petition to qualify as independent candidates. They are Cindy Sheehan, in the 8th U.S. House district, and Connor Vlakancic, in the 15th State Senate district (by coincidence, the California 15th State Senate district is also the subject of the preceding post). Vlakancic needs even more signatures than Cindy Sheehan, since California State Senate districts have bigger populations than U.S. House districts. Vlakancic kicked off his petition drive on June 28, and he and his team got 327 signatures on the first day. The deadline for California independent petitions in August 8. Vlakancic needs 13,533 valid signatures. The last time someone qualified as an independent for a California State Senate district was 1994, when incumbent Quentin Kopp was re-elected (Kopp was elected as an independent in 1986 and also re-elected as an independent in 1990).