OpEdNews.com has a report by Michael Collins here about the opening day of the Reclaim Democracy conference. That conference extends into November 10 and November 11 as well. The first day of the conference focused largely on the curtailment of voting rights for District of Columbia residents, as well as voting rights problems for New Orleans residents, and the Electoral College.
On November 7, the Reform Party nominee for Allegheny County Council-at-large, David Tessitor, polled 8.3% of the vote. Allegheny County contains Pittsburgh and is Pennsylvania’s second-most populous county. Tessitor had both a Democratic and a Republican opponent. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had endorsed Tessitor shortly before the election.
Pennsylvania permits a party to be a recognized party in just a single county, even if it isn’t recognized statewide. County parties win recognition by polling 5% of the vote. Unfortunately, “political party” status in Pennsylvania is not what it is in other states. Pennsylvania says a “political party” is still not ballot-qualified, unless it has registration equal to 15% of the statewide total. Nevertheless, being recognized as a party carries some advantages. Such parties are listed on the voter registration form, and have more freedom to nominate non-members than unqualified parties do.
The Coalition for Free & Open Elections (COFOE) was founded in 1985. It consists of the nation’s nationally-organized minor parties, and other organizations, that wish to work toward easing ballot access barriers for minor party and independent candidates, and also to work against other barriers to free elections. Organizations that join COFOE each send a representative to the COFOE Board meetings, and participate in decisions about how to allocate COFOE’s slender resources. Recently, Unity08 joined the COFOE board. Other COFOE organization-members are the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party, the Socialist Party, the Working Families Party, and the Committee for a Unified Independent Party.
Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform (OBAR), which is sponsoring the initiative petition to ease the Oklahoma ballot access laws, has decided to double the pay of paid circulators, if those paid circulators turn in at least 50 signatures on any particular day. It is hoped that this will speed up the pace of collecting signatures. However, this will also require more money. Please consider sending a donation to OBAR, PO Box 14042, Tulsa Ok 74159. If you have already donated, thank you. A check can be made out to either “OBAR” or “Oklahoma Ballot Access Reform.”
In the first week in November, the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department asked 18 states to prove that they are in compliance with the 1993 federal voter registration law. That law is commonly refered to as “Motor Voter.” It requires state and local government welfare offices and Department of Motor Vehicles offices to help register voters. The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Vermont.
Petitioning is more successful when a large proportion of adult citizens are registered to vote. It is believed that the above-named states have not been following the federal law, partly because federal enforcement has been lax during the last six years. If the Justice Department’s new interest in enforcing “Motor Voter” is successful in increasing the percentage of adult citizens who are registered voters, that will help minor party and independent candidate petitions, and it will also help initiatives.
