On February 21, the Massachusetts Joint Election Laws Committee passed SB 446. It permits people to register to vote on election day. If it is signed into law, it would take effect in time for the November 2008 election. It only applies to the general elections of 2008 and 2010 and would then expire.
February 21 was the deadline for anyone to file a challenge to the petition of a Democratic or Republican candidate seeking a place on the April 22 Pennsylvania primaries. Approximately 60 challenges were filed. Pennsylvania primary candidates need 2,000 signatures for statewide office. Some statewide offices also have county distribution requirements.
Four candidates filed for the Democratic primary for State Treasurer. They are Dennis Morrison-Wesley, Jennifer Mann, Rob McCord, and John F. Cordisco. McCord challenged Morrison-Wesley and Mann on the grounds that their petitions lacked at least 100 signatures from each of five counties.
All county distribution requirements for statewide petitions were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969, in an Illinois case called Moore v Ogilvie. No state still has any statewide candidate petitions with county distribution requirements except Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania state courts have upheld that state’s county distribution requirements, notwithstanding Moore v Ogilvie. However, in December 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court again reiterated what it had said in Moore v Ogilvie. In Bush v Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court said, “We relied on these principles in the context of the presidential selection process in Moore v Ogilvie, where we invalidated a county-based procedure that diluted the influence of citizens in larger counties in the nominating process. There we observed that ‘the idea that one group can be granted greater voting strength than another is hostile to the one man, one vote basis of our representative government’.”
Bush v Gore gave additional new prestige to the old precedent Moore v Ogilvie, to the extent that lower courts started invalidating county distribution requirements for initiatives. Perhaps one of the challenged candidates for Pennsylvania Treasurer will notice this development in the law, and challenge the Pennsylvania county distribution requirement for statewide petitions.
On February 20, the Oklahoma House Subcommittee on Elections & Redistricting passed HB 2869 and HB 3350.
HB 2869 makes it illegal to pay circulators on a per-signature basis. HB 3350 expands the period in which to circulate a statewide initiative from 90 days to one year.
In the 29 states (and D.C.) that have registration by party, the percentage of voters who are Democrats has been:
1992 47.76%
1994 47.13%
1996 45.69%
1998 44.94%
2000 43.84%
2002 42.68%
2004 41.87%
2006 41.64%
2008 41.66%
All the figures are for October or November of the year indicated, except that the 2008 figure is as of either late 2007, or early 2008. The only exception is Maine, which hasn’t done a tally during the last year. Maine data is included but it is as of November 2006.
A state-by-state breakdown, plus figures for independents and minor parties, will be in the print edition of Ballot Access News, March 1 2008 edition.
Ralph Nader filed a lawsuit last year against the Democratic National Committee, for conspiring to prevent voters from voting for him in November 2004. The DNC filed motions to dismiss the case earlier last month, and Nader’s attorneys have just filed a response, explaining why the lawsuit should proceed to trial. Here is a copy of Nader’s latest brief. It is 30 pages long. The case is in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, and is called Nader v McAuliffe, 1:07cv-1101.
