On June 14, Ralph Nader submitted 2,000 signatures to be an independent candidate in Rhode Island. The state requires 1,000 signatures.
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On July 14, U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus held a hearing in Ohio Libertarian Party v Brunner. The issue is whether the Ohio Libertarian Party is qualified or not. The old law on how a party becomes qualified was struck down in 2006, and the legislature has never replaced it. To fill the gap, the Secretary of State created a new procedure, with a deadline three weeks later than the old unconstitutional deadline (November of the year before the election), and with the number of signatures cut in half (from 40,228 signatures to 20,114 signatures). The Ohio Libertarian Party had turned in 6,500 signatures on the day before the March 2008 primary instead. No other group even tried to qualify as a party this year in Ohio.
The hearing lasted 90 minutes. The judge was very well-informed about the details of the case, and seemed very interested in it. He indicated he will have a ruling in the next 10 days. Approximately 20 people were in the courtroom audience. It always helps a ballot access case when the judge sees that the supporters of whatever party or candidate is trying to get on the ballot cared enough to attend the oral argument.
On July 14, Ralph Nader turned in 18,000 signatures to qualify as an independent presidential candidate in South Carolina. The state requires 10,000. Nader is the first person to submit petitions as an independent candidate in South Carolina since 1992, when Perot also qualified as an independent in that state.
In 2004, Nader had received the nomination of the ballot-qualified Independence Party of South Carolina. This year, the Independence Party of South Carolina has equivocated about whom it wants to nominate for president. The party’s leadership has considered nominating Barack Obama, although it is unlikely that Obama will let any ballot-qualified party in South Carolina (other than the Democratic Party, of course) nominate him. The South Carolina Attorney General still hasn’t issued his opinion on whether two parties that jointly run the same slate of presidential electors, can have their vote totals added together.
On July 14, the California Secretary of State, in a press release, noted that for the first time ever, over half the voters who voted in the recent primary cast their votes by mail. Specifically, 58.7% of all voters who voted, voted by mail. California is the third state to have experienced this phenomenon. All votes in Oregon are now cast by mail, and in Washington state in recent elections, the overwhelming majority of votes have been cast by mail.
On July 14, the California Secretary of State released the official totals from the June 3 primary, including all write-in totals. In the 15th State Senate district, no Democrat was on the ballot. Dennis Morris, a Democratic attorney in Pismo Beach, had filed as a write-in for the Democratic primary when he learned that no other Democrat was running. He polled 2,096 write-ins. The Republican incumbent, Senator Abel Maldonado, had also filed to have his write-ins counted in the Democratic primary, but Maldonado only received 533 write-ins.
Under California Election Code section 8605, no one may receive the nomination of a party by write-in votes, unless he or she receives a number of write-ins equal to 1% of the vote for that office in the last general election. So, even though Morris’ write-in total is very impressive, he cannot be considered nominated; he needed 3,689 write-ins to meet that standard. Since the California Constitution, since 2004, has said, “A political party shall not be denied the ability to place on the general election ballot the candidate who received, at the primary election, the highest vote among that party’s candidates”, Morris intends to bring a lawsuit, alleging that sec. 8605 violates the California Constitution.