Utah’s deadline for candidates to file in presidential primaries is the earliest in the nation. That deadline was October 15. Candidates needed to file a declaration of candidacy and pay $500. Sam Brownback, for unknown reasons, did not file in the Utah Republican presidential primary.

Names that will be on the Republican primary are: Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, Keyes, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo and Thompson. Names on the Democratic primary are: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama, Richardson, and a relative unknown, Frank Lynch of Florida.

The Constitution Party is the only other ballot-qualified party. It could have had a presidential primary, but chose not to. Newly-qualifying arties that wanted to have a 2008 presidential primary were required to file their petition to create the party by July 2007. No group did that. The Libertarian Party will finish that petition soon, but didn’t finish in time for its own presidential primary.

Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform (OBAR) has re-launched the initiative that would ask the Oklahoma voters if they wish to ease the ballot access laws. Oklahoma law requires initiative petitions to be completed within 90 days, but the group backing the initiative chooses its own 90-day period. The original petition was launched on September 15, but since it was mostly dependent on volunteer circulators, it had only collected 2,700 signatures during the first three weeks.

The new campaign will run from October 15 through January 13, and will depend on paid circulators. The Committee will be quite careful to make sure all circulators are Oklahoma residents. The new initiative has been re-worded somewhat. The biggest change is that the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot will be 2%, not 1% as in the first attempt. Circulators of the first attempt got a sense that some voters thought a 1% vote test is too easy. The national median vote test of all 50 states is 2%, so the new initiative can honestly tell voters that the initiative merely will put Oklahoma into the national average. The vote test is 2% of the vote for any statewide race at either of the last two elections. Oklahoma has approximately 10 statewide partisan races in mid-term years.

For more information, see www.okvoterchoice.org. If you have donated to this initiative, your contribution has not been wasted. The first attempt only used up $1,500.

Oklahoma state officials recommend that an initiative be submitted eight months before the election. The new initiative attempt will be complete on January 13, so, assuming it qualifies, it will appear on the November 2008 ballot. Any attempt to qualify the initiative earlier than that might have meant that the initiative would have appeared on the primary ballot, which would have been a strategic error, since independents can’t vote in Oklahoma primaries (except they can vote on ballot questions). It is desired that the initiative be placed on a ballot when sizeable numbers of independent voters will be voting.

As noted earlier, there are two federal cases filed by Florida voters or elected office-holders, against the Democratic National Committee, on the Committee’s decision to deprive Florida of any delegates to the national convention. The first one, which lost on October 5, has been appealed to the 11th circuit. That one is DiMaio v Democratic National Committee, middle district. The second one, filed by U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, still doesn’t have a hearing date in the U.S. District Court, northern district. It is called Nelson v Dean.