On July 22, Acting Guam Governor Michael W. Cruz vetoed Bill 287. That bill would have moved Guam’s presidential vote from November to September. The bill’s sponsor had believed that moving the Guam presidential vote to September would get more attention in the United States for the Guam vote. However, Lieutenant Governor Cruz said, “If Guam is going to conduct a straw poll for president, we should vote the same as all other American citizens, which is during the general election.”
On July 25, Ralph Nader submitted 7,500 more signatures in West Virginia. He had already submitted 17,000. That first batch has already been checked, and it had a 69% validity rate. Assuming the same validity rate for the recent batch, he will easily meet the requirement of 15,118 valid signatures. Thanks to Glenn Brown for this news. Also on July 25, Nader submitted his Tennessee petition, and had earlier submitted a petition in Washington state, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, all relatively easy states.
Also on July 25, the Washington state Libertarian Party submitted over 2,000 signatures, toward the requirement of 1,000 for placing Bob Barr on the ballot.
Florida State Senator Steven Geller is about to drop his lawsuit, Geller v Democratic National Committee, because the Obama campaign has assured him that Obama will ask that the full Florida delegation be seated, with a full vote for each delegate. The lawsuit had been filed on May 22, 2008, in federal court in Miami.
On July 22, the Arizona Secretary of State asked the 9th circuit to reconsider its July 9 decision in Nader v Brewer. That decision had struck down both the early June petition deadline for independent presidential candidates, and also the law making it illegal for out-of-staters to circulate petitions in Arizona.
Pennsylvania Senator Mike Folmer (R-Lancaster and Lebanon Counties) has introduced a bill to greatly ease minor party and independent candidate ballot access. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet. It is believed that it permits a minor party to be ballot-qualified (and to nominate by convention) if it has registration of one-twentieth of 1%. If that were current law, the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties would be ballot-qualified with no need for any petitioning for their nominees. UPDATE: here is Senator Folmer’s press release about the bill.
Independent candidates would need the same number of signatures that Democrats and Republicans need when they try to get on primary ballots. The statewide independent petition would be 2,000 signatures.
