The rollcall is finished at the Constitution Party national convention, and the results are a first ballot victory for Chuck Baldwin of Florida, for president. Baldwin was the party’s vice-presidential candidate in 2004. Thanks to the Alan Keyes web site www.alankeyes.com for broadcasting a live showing of the rollcall, and also thanks to ThirdPartyWatch. The final vote was: Baldwin 383.8; Keyes 125.7; Max Riekse 4.5; Daniel Imperato 1; Susan Duzey 1. The Keyes total was buoyed by strong support from California, and Keyes also won the most votes from Alaska, Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

Before the vote was taken, a procedural vote settled that Ron Paul, who had not sought the party’s nomination, was not a valid choice at the convention roll-call.

The New Mexico Secretary of State’s office has finished checking the petition of Ralph Nader’s Independent Party. The petition has enough valid signatures. The Secretary of State is still working on verifying the Constitution Party petition.

Nader chose to qualify a new party in New Mexico, rather than qualifying as an independent presidential candidate, because the number of signatures for a new party is only one-sixth as many signatures. By contrast, in 2004, he did the independent presidential petition.

On April 23, a Florida State Court of Appeals struck down a law passed in 2007 that lets voters who had signed an initiative revoke their signatures. The 2007 law also said that revocation forms shall be furnished to voters at each county elections office, and that someone who revoked his or her signature could not thereafter sign that same initiative again.

The case is Florida Hometown Democracy v Browning, 1D07-6024. The plaintiff is struggling to qualify its statewide initiative, and is fighting other legal battles over the sufficiency of its petition. One can imagine the frustration that any petitioning group feels, as it tries to complete a petition, knowing that its opponents are carrying on a public relations campaign to persuade people who have already signed, to revoke their signatures. The proponents can never know for sure how many of their signatures have been revoked, and thus can never know whether they have enough valid signatures.

Signature revocation has also been used against minor party petitions, notably in New York and other states in 1940 against various state Communist Party petitions.

The Florida court said that the Florida Constitution protects the initiative process, and makes no provision for revocation of signatures. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.