California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 2948 on Saturday, September 30. This is the bill that would have authorized California to join a compact with other willing states. Once states containing a majority of electoral votes had signed the compact, these states would pledge to appoint presidential electors pledged to the national popular vote winner.
On September 29, Florida Congressman Mark Foley resigned his seat and withdrew as a candidate for re-election, even though he had won the Florida Republican primary on September 5. Under Florida law, his name will remain on the November ballot. However, if the voters elect him, the actual winner will be the individual (whose name was not on the ballot) chosen by the Republican Party’s district 16 committee. A Republican state legislator, Joe Negron, has already declared he wants that nomination.
On September 29, 2006, Ralph Nader filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s law that requires circulators to be registered voters. The Ohio law on this subject is clearly unconstitutional, because in 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that states cannot require initiative circulators to be registered voters. Nader v Blackwell, 2:06cv821. The case is not moot because Nader (who was injured by this law in 2004) is suing for damages (of $1).
An earlier lawsuit filed by Nader supporters in 2004 did not ever get a substantive ruling, because the judge refused to rule, on the grounds that some of Nader’s circulators had been deceptive about their domicile.
Pennsylvania courts are mulling over three issues, all related to whether the Green Party statewide nominees will be on this year’s ballot: (1) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will soon decide how many valid signatures are needed this year for statewide office; (2) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was asked to decide (on September 29) whether the petition-checking process this year was valid, and whether costs should be assessed against the Greens if they were; (3) the US Court of Appeals is still considering whether to rehear the constitutional ballot access case; that rehearing has been pending since Sep. 5.
Three Arizona Libertarian candidates, and the party, sued in state court on September 28, over Maricopa County’s failure to tally all write-ins at the party’s primary on September 12. Two State Senate candidates are each short two write-ins in order to be nominated, and a candidate for Justice of the Peace is short one write-in. Unopposed write-in candidates at party primaries must not only outpoll any opponents, they must receive a certain number of write-ins, to be considered nominated.
Maricopa County already found some more write-ins to enable one of the party’s congressional candidates to be nominated. The case is Arizona Libertarian Party v Brewer, Superior Ct., Maricopa Co., cv-2006-14637. A hearing is set for 10 am, Oct. 2.
