On September 7, a U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City upheld Oklahoma’s law, banning out-of-state petition circulators. Yes on Term Limits v Savage, no. 5:07-cv-680. Here is the decision.

The judge, Tim Leonard, seemed to feel that elections officials can’t check the validity of petitions, unless it can interview the circulators. It isn’t clear why a state can’t check signatures on petitions by comparing a signature on the petition, with the same voter’s signature on a voter registration form.

Judge Leonard’s rationale is that out-of-state circulators will leave the state as soon as they are done working on the petition, and if the state needs to interview them about their work, the state won’t be able to find them.

The California Republican Party’s current policy is that independent voters may vote in the June 2008 primary (the primary for all partisan office except president), but not in the February 2008 presidential primary. On September 7, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the delegates to the party’s state convention to change its rules and let independents vote in its presidential primary. See here for the full story.

Thanks to the ACLU lawsuit settled against Iowa a few months ago, Iowa now has a procedure than an unqualified party can be listed on the voter registration form, if it placed a nominee on the ballot in the last election, and if it submits 850 signatures on a petition. The Iowa Green Party now has over 800 signatures on its voter registration petition, and the Iowa Libertarian Party now has 600. No other unqualified parties are attempting this.

Other states that have registration by party, but which refuse to tally the number of registrations for any unqualified party, are Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The policy of refusing to do a tally for any unqualified parties has been held unconstitutional in five states so far (Colorado, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and New York).