Decision Likely on January 11 in Kucinich Case Against Texas Democratic Party

Posted on by January 10, 2008
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Dennis Kucinich’s lawsuit against the Texas Democratic Party has a hearing at 9 am, January 11, in federal court in Austin. Judge Lee Yeakel has indicated that he will probably rule at the end of the hearing. The case is over ballot access to the Texas presidential primary. Anyone who pays $2,500 and signs the oath is put on the ballot. However, Kucinich refuses to sign the oath, which says that he will “fully support” the eventual Democratic nominee. Kucinich had said it would sign if he could amend it so that it says, “so long as that nominee agrees to abjure the use of war as an instrument of policy.” UPDATE: here is the brief of the Texas Democratic Party, and here is the Kucinich brief.

Professor Argues that Order of Names on New Hampshire Ballot Hurt Obama

Posted on by January 10, 2008
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Stanford University social science professor Jon A. Krosnick argues that the New Hampshire order of candidates on the Democratic presidential primary ballot injured Barack Obama. See this article. New Hampshire law requires a random drawing of a letter of the alphabet, for each election. For the 2008 presidential primary, the random letter was “z”. No candidate had a surname beginning with “z”. The law also required alphabetical order following the random sample letter, so in actual practice, the Democratic ballot listed candidates in alphabetical order, ranging from “a” to “y”. This put Hillary Clinton 4th from the top, but Barack Obama 4th from the bottom. The ballot had 21 Democratic presidential candidates. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this.