On February 16, New Mexico HB 331 was defeated in the House Voters & Elections Committee. The bill would have eliminated the need for a qualified minor party to submit a separate petition for each of its convention nominees. New Mexico is the only state that requires one petition to qualify a new party, and then separate petitions for each of its nominees. The “double petitioning” requirement is currently being litigated in federal court.
On February 13, the Idaho House State Affairs Committee introduced HB 185. It provides, for the first time in Idaho history, that the voter registration form should ask voters to choose a party. Then, there would be separate primary ballots for each party. Parties would have the right to decide for themselves if independent voters could vote in their primaries.
The bill seems to be deficient, in that no provision is made for voters to register as members of unqualified parties. The 10th circuit and the 2nd circuit have ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects the right of a voter to join a party, even if it isn’t ballot-qualified. New Jersey state courts have agreed. Idaho is in the 9th circuit; the issue has never arisen in the 9th circuit.
Law Professor Mark R. Brown has authored an article that criticizes the Pennsylvania state courts for charging candidates huge fees for the costs of removing them from the ballot. The article can be seen here.
California Assemblywoman Audra Strickland has tentatively agreed to introduce a bill to moderate the California minimum vote threshold for write-in candidates at partisan primaries. Slightly over half the states permit write-in votes in partisan primaries. Most of these states set a minimum number of write-ins needed for someone to win a primary by write-in vote. California has one of the most stringent such minimum vote tests. It is so severe, no one got nominated by write-in at California’s June 2006 primary, even though there were 7 races in which one of the two major parties tried very hard to nominate someone by write-in (in all 7 cases, no one had qualified to appear on the primary ballot of that party, so a write-in nomination was the only hope for that party to have a nominee on the November ballot).
The 4th circuit has agreed to expedite Miller v Brown. This is the Republican Party’s lawsuit against the Virginia open primary. Last year, the party won the case in U.S. District Court, as applied to offices in which the party is compelled to nominate by primary. The state appealed to the 4th circuit. All the briefs are due in the period February 22-March 15, 2007. Oral argument is likely in April 2007. Thanks to Steve Rankin for this news.
