A filmmaker is making a movie about the Pennsylvania Green Party’s ballot access woes in 2006. Although the movie isn’t finished yet, here is a trailer. Click on the screen below.
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On December 21, 2006, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, invalidated part of the McCain-Feingold act. According to a web page that covers the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court may consider the federal government’s appeal at its January 19 conference. Results of the conference will be made known on January 22. The case is Federal Election Commission v Wisconsin Right to Life, no. 06-969. A parallel case is Senator John McCain v Wisconsin Right to Life, no. 06-970.
On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court received the opposition brief in New York State Bd. of Elections v Lopez Torres, no. 06-766. If the state of New York wishes to rebut it, that brief must be submitted in the next two weeks. The U.S. Supreme Court will then probably decide in early March whether to hear New York’s appeal.
During August and September 2006, three U.S. Courts of Appeals struck down a state ballot access law. The three cases were from New York, Ohio and Illinois. It seems likely that neither Ohio nor Illinois will ask for U.S. Supreme Court review. Therefore, if the U.S. Supreme Court hears a ballot access case in 2007(because a state asked it to), New York is the obvious candidate.
The U.S. Supreme Court has acted in a biased fashion, over the last 23 years, in ballot access cases and in other election law cases. When a state government loses in the court below, the Court almost always hears that state government’s appeal. But when a state wins in the court below, the Court generally refuses to hear the appeal brought by the people opposed to the state law (except when the Democratic or Republican Parties bring an election law appeal to the US Supreme Court, that Court almost always accepts it).
The opposition brief filed in the Lopez Torres case makes it clear that the case is a ballot access case (New York state newspapers frequently misrepresent the case). The issues in the New York case are petition requirements that make it exceedingly difficult to get candidates for Delegate to Judicial Nominating Conventions on the primary ballot of the major parties. The opposition brief describes these petition barriers: “For each prospective delegate, the candidate would have to gather 500 valid signatures of party members residing in the specific Assembly District. As a result, the number of signatures required just to run a slate of delegates across a single Judicial District is several times larger than the number required to get onto the primary ballot for other judicial and non-judicial offices covering the same territory and rivals the number required to run for Governor statewide. In addition, a candidate would need to gather many more than the statutory minimum. Those few candidates who have tried to run alternate slates of delegates have not come close to success…One candidate testified he would have had to recruit ‘several dozen people to work full-time at gathering’ 9,000 signatures over the course of 37 days. The candidate concluded that ‘there was simply no way he could overcome these organizational and financial burdens.”
To read the entire brief, click here.
On January 5, Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon introduced SB 28, which lowers the number of signatures for a new party from 5% of the last vote cast, to 5,000 signatures. Between 1924 and 1975, Oklahoma had required 5,000 signatures to recognize a new party, and the state never had more than 4 parties on the ballot (including the Democratic and Republican Parties) in all those years.
SB 28 also lowers the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot from 10% for the top office (president/governor), to 1%. Finally, a group is free to pay $5,000 instead of collecting 5,000 signatures; it chooses whether to pay the money or to collect the signatures.
The dispute over which faction of the national Prohibition Party is the “legitimate” faction has a court hearing on January 16 in Media, Pennsylvania, at the Delaware County Courthouse. It starts at 10 a.m. The case is titled Residuary Trust Under Will of George Pennock, no. 114-1937. Normally a court would not be involved in an intra-party dispute, but in this case, a court must be involved, because the national party has been the recipient of an trust payment (set up in 1930), and only a court can tell the bank where send the money.