Indiana Independent Candidate Sues to Get on November 2007 Ballot

Posted on by July 23, 2007
Reply

On July 20, Indiana independent candidate Mark Herak filed a lawsuit to get back on the November 2007 ballot. He is running for re-election to the city council of Highland, a small city in Lake County, Indiana. His ballot label is “Highland First Party.”

He was removed from the ballot by the Lake County Election Board on July 18, on the grounds that he isn’t a “true” independent. However, Indiana election law does not limit who may be an independent candidate, except that the candidate must not have lost a partisan primary for the same office in the same election year.

The Board said he isn’t a “true” independent because he won the previous election as a Republican nominee, because he voted in the May 2007 Republican primary, and because he still has custody of a piece of Republican Party equipment in his garage. That piece of equipment is a hot dog vendor stand. The vote on the Board was 3-2, with the Republican members voting to keep Herak off the ballot and the Democratic members voting to leave him on the ballot. The lawsuit is called Herak v Lake County Election Board, and it has a hearing in Hammond, Indiana, at 9 am on Wednesday, July 25.

New Hampshire Bill Signed Into Law; Deals with Distribution of List of Registered Voters

Posted on by July 23, 2007
Reply

On July 18, New Hampshire SB 98 was signed into law. It provides that the statewide list of registered voters should be provided to qualified political parties, for $25 plus 50 cents per thousand names. The bill does not authorize anyone but qualified parties to obtain the list.

The statewide list of registered voters in fairly new in New Hampshire. Until a few years ago, there was no statewide list, and anyone who wanted such a list had to deal with hundreds of town clerks in each town in the state.

In 1970 the U.S. Supreme Court summarily affirmed a decision of a 3-judge district court. That decision, Socialist Workers Party v Rockefeller, said that if the government gives a free or inexpensive list of all the registered voters to qualified parties, it must also give the list on the same terms to unqualified parties that are trying to petition themselves or their nominees onto the ballot. The case is at 314 F Supp 984 (1970), affirmed, 400 US 806. The relevant part of the decision is at pages 995-996. This information has been forwarded to the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office, which is asking the Attorney General for an opinion.

Since November 1996, New Hampshire has not recognized any parties except the Democratic and Republican Parties. It is the only New England state in which no other parties have enjoyed qualified status, at any time during the last ten years.

Todd Gitlin Op-Ed on Ralph Nader in Los Angeles Times

Posted on by July 22, 2007
Reply

Famous author Todd Gitlin has an op-ed piece in the July 22, 2007 Los Angeles Times. The op-ed attacks Ralph Nader for having run for president in 2000 and 2004, because the article says Nader voters would otherwise have voted Democratic. The piece can be seen here.

The article is in error to say that Ralph Nader injured John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. Both polling data and analysis of Nader’s election returns show that Nader did not injure Kerry. See the Washington Post, Oct. 22, 2004, page one, for a report that the nation’s three largest pollsters gave extra questions to sample members who said they were voting for Nader. These extra questions showed that to a slight extent, people who intended to vote for Nader said if they couldn’t vote for Nader, they would vote for Bush, not Kerry. For the election returns evidence, see the lead story in the January 1, 2005 Ballot Access News.

Todd Gitlin was featured in the move about Nader, “An Unreasonable Man.” That documentary, which was very even-handed and which was released earlier this year, should be seen by anyone interested in the contents of this blog.