Blogs that are chosen to be part of the “www.news.google.com” service get a big lift. Congratulations to Austin Cassidy and Jason Seagraves on having www.independentpoliticalreport.com blog now included in the google news service. http://ThirdPartyWatch.com also enjoys that status, as does this blog. Having that status is even good for the commenters, because their comments also receive a bigger audience.
Texas Representative Leo Berman, featured in the blog post just below this one, has kindly responded to my e-mail on Texas ballot access. He is chair of the House Elections Committee, and it would be very desirable for those of you who live in Texas to communicate with him. It is always wise to be not only courteous, but as friendly as one can be, while still disagreeing. His district phone number is 903-939-2400. His fax is 903-939-2402. His e-mail is district6.berman@house.state.tx.us. If we could change his opinion, we probably could get ballot access reform in 2009.
Berman’s response is, “Thanks for your advice. It seems strange to us Texans to get advice from a Californian, especially someone from San Francisco! We’ve done quite well without advice from the left coast.”
I responded, “Please don’t hold my residence against me! I have testified in court in Texas, including Pilcher v Rains, the case that ruled that Texas can’t require voter registration affidavit numbers on petitions. I have testified in the Texas legislature on ballot access. When candidates can’t get on the Texas November ballot, they file to be write-in candidates. Counting write-ins adds to the expense and headaches for election officials. Schmitz got 6,039 write-ins in Texas in 1972. Nader in 2004 got 9,153 write-ins in Texas. All those ballots had to be set aside by the vote-counting equipment, and looked at by a human being, which is costly. So I don’t agree that Texas is getting along OK. But thanks again for writing.”
This newspaper story, published June 3, quotes Texas Representative Leo Berman defending Texas ballot access laws for minor parties and independents. Berman says preventing voters who vote in a primary from signing for a new or previously unqualified party, or for an independent candidate, is the same thing as preventing a voter from voting in the primary of two different parties.
Signing a petition for a new party is not the same thing as voting for that party. Signing a petition for a new party is merely the voter’s telling the government that the voter believes the party is significant enough to be on the ballot. Obviously signing a petition for a new party is not the same as voting for a new party, because the U.S. uses secret voting, and a petition is not secret. Not only can the circulator see who signs the petition, so can all the other people who view that petition, including elections officials when they validate the petition. Furthermore, no other state has a primary screenout for petitions to qualify a new party, so obviously legislators in the other states don’t agree with Berman’s theory.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office also defended Texas’ law, saying that since two independent candidates for Governor appeared on the ballot in 2006, the law is reasonable. They ignore the fact that the 2006 petition requirement for independent candidates was 45,253 signatures, but the 2008 independent presidential requirement is 74,108 signatures.
One benchmark of whether a state’s ballot access law is too difficult, is to see if that state kept the person who placed 3rd in the presidential election off its own state ballot. Texas law kept the 3rd place finisher off its ballot in 1972, 1984, and 2004. Also in 1976, Texas law would have kept the 3rd place finisher off its ballot, except that the US Supreme Court intervened. The 3rd place presidential finishers who couldn’t comply with Texas law were John G. Schmitz in 1972 (American Party candidate), David Bergland in 1984 (Libertarian), and Ralph Nader in 2004 (independent). Eugene McCarthy in 1976 (independent) only got on because the U.S. Supreme Court ordered him onto the Texas ballot.
Three Republican presidential primaries were held on June 3. The Montana results are: John McCain 76.3%, Ron Paul 21.5%, uncommitted 2.2%. This is Ron Paul’s second-best primary showing for 2008, after Idaho.
South Dakota results are: McCain 72.5%, Paul 17.1%, Huckabee 7.4%, uncommitted 3.0%.
New Mexico results are: McCain 86.0%, Paul 14.0%.
California held its primary on June 4 for all partisan offices other than president (the California presidential primary had been in February). Elections officials estimate the turnout was only 31% of the registered voters. If so, that would be the lowest California statewide primary turnout in history. The previous low had been the June 2006 primary, with 33% of the registered voters.
For the Peace & Freedom Party, and the American Independent Party, of California, the June 4 event is of crucial importance. Elections for county central committee were held on June 4. The results will determine which presidential candidates will be nominated by those parties, especially for the Peace & Freedom Party. However, many of the candidates were write-in candidates, and write-ins are always the last to be counted. Full results may not be known until early July.
Also important for the Peace & Freedom Party are the results for Assembly, 5th district, in Sacramento. There is a contest between Gerald Frink and C. T. Weber for the party’s nomination. Both Frink and Weber hope that Weber wins. But since the write-ins will be slow to be counted, and since Weber was a write-in candidate, we must wait for those results also. The race is important, because California law irrationally requires a write-in candidate in a party primary to get thousands of write-ins, no matter how few registered members the party has. But if Weber, a write-in, receives more votes than Frink, whose name was on the ballot, that will set up the conditions for a lawsuit to perhaps finally overturn the California law on the maximum number of write-ins needed for a candidate to become a party nominee.
