For the first time since 1983, the Libertarian Party national convention has delegations from 49 states and the District of Columbia. The one state without any delegates is North Dakota.
Also, in a very unusual move, Michael Jingozian immediately followed his nomination speech by getting back up and nominating Mike Gravel.
The Arkansas May 20 primary (for office other than president) had the lowest turnout for an Arkansas primary in history. Only 16% of the registered voters voted. Legislative leaders are bemoaning that result, and talking about introducing bills next year to re-combine the presidential primary and the primary for other office.
Although the Green Party is ballot-qualifried, it is not entitled to nominate its candidates by primary, and will have a final state convention in June to nominate candidates for state legislature, and perhaps a few more candidates for Congress. No minor party in the last 70 years has had more than eight candidates for the Arkansas legislature in any one year, but the Arkansas Green Party will probably surpass that record.
On May 23, Ralph Nader and a group of supporters rallied outside the White House. Nader called for President Bush and Vice-President Cheney to resign, and drew publicity that appeared in news outlets around the world. The Zogby Poll released on May 21 showed Nader at 4% and Bob Barr at 3%, and also showed Barack Obama leading John McCain by ten percentage points.
Seven candidates seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination have received enough support at the convention to qualify for the Saturday evening debate: Bob Barr, Mike Gravel, Steve Kubby, Michael Jingozian, George Phillies, Wayne Allyn Root, and Mary Ruwart. Candidates qualified if at least 57 delegates “voted” for them to be in the debate. Delegates only had one “vote” for this purpose.
In other Libertarian convention news, Daniel Imperato endorsed Bob Barr for the Libertarian nomination.
On May 23, backer’s of Oregon’s initiative to establish a “top-two” system submitted 92,000 signatures. They need 82,579. The signatures will now be checked, and if the initiative needs additional signatures, the group has until July 3 to obtain more. Hence, it is extremely likely that the initiative will be on the November 2008 Oregon ballot.
Like similar initiatives in California and Washington in 2004, the Oregon initiative provides that all candidates would appear on the primary ballot, and all voters would get identical primary ballots. Then, only the two vote-getters with the most votes could be on the November ballot. The initiative does not apply to president.
The Oregon initiative provides that the candidate’s registration should be printed on the May ballot. If the candidate is endorsed by any particular ballot-qualified party, that information will also be on the May ballot. However, the only parties that can be mentioned on the ballot are those that meet the definition of “political party”, which is a group that polled 1% of the vote in the last election for a statewide office, or a group with registration of one-half of 1%, or a group that recently submitted a petition of 1.5% of the last gubernatorial vote. The Oregon initiative is therefore much more confining than the Washington state law, in which a candidate can choose any partisan label that is under 17 characters and is not obscene. Under the Oregon initiative, if a candidate is registered as a Socialist, “Socialist” will not be printed on the May ballot, since the Socialist Party is not a qualified party.
