The US Supreme Court will probably decide on May 17 whether to hear the Guam election case. However, any decision won’t be known to the public until Monday, May 21. The case is Underwood v Guam, no. 06-1268. The issue is whether the term “votes cast” includes void votes. The answer will determine whether the gubernatorial election of 2006 should have had a run-off. A federal law requires the winning candidate for Governor of Guam to get a majority of “votes cast.”
According to a newspaper story in the Los Angeles Times of May 16, Unity08 now has 60,000 individuals who have signed up to be eligible to vote in its on-line presidential primary next year.
A Rasmussen Poll released on May 8 finds that 58% of American adults say it would be good for the United States to have a truly competitive third political party. Only 23% say it would not be good, and 19% are not sure.
Younger voters are most likely to support the idea. 65% of those under age 40 said a competitive third party would be good. By contrast, only 43% of those over age 65 said a competitive third party would be good for the country.
On May 15, Texas Republican Senators tried to pass HB 218, the bill to require voters at the polls to show government photo-ID. But in a dramatic turn of events, the bill was stalled. See here for the dramatic details. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
On May 15, the Oklahoma Supreme Court refused to hear the Libertarian Party’s ballot access case, a case that had been filed in 2004. The case is Libertarian Political Organization v Clingman. The party had spent a great deal of money in 2004 to submit a petition signed by 2% of the last vote cast, but the law requires 5%. The party had felt that turning in a petition signed by 27,000 signatures would establish that it had a modicum of voter support. The fact that no one else even tried in 2004, and that Oklahoma voters were the only voters with no choices for president on their ballot except Bush and Kerry in 2004, also seemed powerful evidence that the law is too strict.
The Oklahoma Constitution says that elections shall be “free and equal”, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything in the real world. Oklahoma is one of 5 states that doesn’t permit write-ins, so Oklahoma voters who wanted to vote for someone other than Bush or Kerry in 2004 completely lost their right to vote.
