Arizona Senator Karen Johnson has said she is willing to again introduce a bill to make it easier for new parties to get on the Arizona ballot. No petition to put a new (or previously unqualified) party on the Arizona ballot has succeeded since 2000.
Senator Johnson’s previous bills to ease the number of signatures always made some headway in the Arizona legislature, but they never passed.
New Hampshire Senator Peter Burling has introduced a bill for the 2008 session, to expand the list of who may obtain the statewide list of registered voters. This is in response to last month’s court decision, striking down the old law. The old law said only qualified parties could obtain the list. New Hampshire has only two qualified parties. The Libertarian Party had filed the lawsuit.
Unfortunately, the text of 2008 bills is not yet available. A telephone call has been placed to Senator Burling, and perhaps it will be possible to learn how the new bill is worded, and which groups and individuals are included in the new bill.
On December 6, a committee of the District of Columbia held a hearing on a proposal to advertise the District’s lack of voting representation in Congress. The proposal includes large electronic signs at major sports stadiums. It is likely that private funding would be available. The Committee is not permitted to approve the idea for a certain number of days after the hearing, but Committee approval is expected in January 2008. The signs will emphasize that D.C. residents have paid billions in federal taxes over the decades.
The United States is the world’s only nation that has elections for representatives to the national legislature, but gives no representation in that legislature to residents of its capital city.
New York Democratic presidential primary candidates need 5,000 signatures to be on that ballot. December 6 was the deadline, but the signatures can be mailed and postmarked on that day, so the list may not be final.
Already filed are petitions for Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. Possibly in the mail are a Chris Dodd petition and a Mike Gravel petition. Hillary Clinton seemed to file the most signatures, approximately 62,000.
Republicans in New York’s presidential primary are listed automatically if they are discussed in the major news media, or if they qualify for primary season matching funds. None of New York’s three other ballot-qualified parties are holding a presidential primary.
The December 6 issue of the Wall Street Journal carries a letter by an Oklahoma state legislator, mentioning the double standard used by the Oklahoma Supreme Court on the issue of who can circulate initiative petitions in that state. See it at this link.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has been inconsistent on the issue of whether persons temporarily living in Oklahoma may circulate an initiative petition. When an initiative that the Court liked was in jeopardy (the initiative to ban cock-fighting), the Court seemed to think it was OK to allow temporary residents to circulate. But when the Court saw an initiative it didn’t like (the 2006 Taxpayers Bill of Rights), it not only invalidated the initiative, it issued a ruling that made it possible for ex post facto prosecution of the initiative’s proponents.
