On April 15, the 9th circuit will hear Nader v Brewer, 06-16251. The issues are whether someone from outside Arizona should be allowed to circulate an independent presidential petition, and whether Arizona’s early June petition deadline for independent presidential candidates violates Anderson v Celebrezze. The hearing is at 9 a.m.
The judges will be Mary Schroeder (a Carter appointee), and Richard Clifton and Consuelo Callahan (Bush Jr. appointees).
On April 7, Missouri SB 797 was sent to the House Elections Committee. It has already passed the Senate. It deletes the requirement that a petition for a new party must list that party’s presidential candidate, and its candidates for presidential elector. Therefore, in the future, if this bill passes, the party petition need not name candidates for any office at all; the party chooses its nominees after the petition has been circulated.
In the meantime, Missouri HB 1310, which moves the independent petition deadline from late July to March, has not advanced in the Senate Committee that hears election law bills, ever since it had a hearing on March 31.
On April 7, this newspaper story ran about Ralph Nader’s rally at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The story says more than 200 people were in attendance.
The Illinois Green Party will have candidates for the U.S. House in 14 of the 19 districts this year. Some were nominated in the party’s primary in February, and others were nominated by party meetings. Because the Green Party is ballot-qualified, it is easy for the party to run candidates.
There are normally few minor party and independent candidates for the U.S. House in Illinois. Illinois requires petitions for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties, equal to 5% of the last vote cast. Comparing the states on how minor and new parties get on the ballot for U.S. House, Illinois has the second most difficult law in the U.S., after Georgia. For independents, however, North Carolina is also worse than Illinois.
The Green slate of 14 U.S. House candidates is the largest number any party (other than the Democratic and Republican Parties) has run in Illinois since 1924. Illinois has 19 districts. In 1924, when Illinois had 25 districts plus two at-large U.S. House members, there were 24 Socialist candidates.
The Maine legislature is unlikely to pass LD 1799, even though it passed all committees. The bill would legalize fusion (the ability of two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate).
