Maine is one of 13 states in which state income tax forms provide a “Check-off” for taxpayers who want to help any particular political party. The tax returns filed this year show that the Maine Greens received more money from this “tax-off” provision than the Maine Republicans did. The August 1 2006 Ballot Access News will contain the data for all parties, for all 13 states.
Maine has an independent state agency called the Commission on Government Ethics and Election Practices. According to the law, the Commission is to have five members, and no more than two can be from the same political party. For some time, there have been only four commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans.
The Green Party, which is ballot-qualified in Maine, recently learned that the law requires that all qualified parties must agree on the identity of each commissioner. This effectively gives the Green Party a veto over each commissioner, when their 3-year terms expire soon. The Green Party is not displeased with the incumbent commissioners, but since there has been an empty seat, the Greens naturally seek to name one of their own as a commissioner. The Green Party has submitted a candidate for that empty seat who is well-qualified by experience.
The Commission’s webpage, www.maine.gov/ethics, describes itself as a “bipartisan” organization.
Ever since 2005, the Constitution Party has experienced internal dissention on the issue of how to handle state party leaders who do not completely agree with the national platform. The state chair of the Nevada branch of the party does not completely agree with the national party’s abortion plank. Some supporters of that plank then tried to expel the Nevada branch of the party, but that move was defeated at the last national party meeting.
Since then, two ballot-qualified state units of the party have expressed displeasure with that outcome, by leaving the national party. They are the Montana and Oregon state units. However, the Idaho and Michigan state affiliates recently rejected the idea of leaving the national party.
Since 2006 is not a presidential election year, the result of state parties disaffiliating from a national party has no practical consequences. However, that would not be true in a presidential election year.
South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts, a Republican, dropped out of the gubernatorial race on July 17. He had circulated petitions to be an independent candidate, but he changed his mind. He said there was no point in running, since he wouldn’t have enough money to campaign and hope to win.
California held its primary last month. There were 2 US House races in which one of the major parties had no one printed on the ballot, but in which the party backed a particular write-in candidate in its own primary. Also, there were 3 legislative races like that. None of the 5 major party members received enough votes to qualify for the November ballot. This is because California has one of the nation’s most severe write-in thresholds for candidates who seek to be nominated by write-in at a party primary.
It seems fairly likely that at least one of the candidates plans to sue to overturn the write-in threshold. The California Constitution now says that a party may not be denied the right to have the person who received the most votes in its primary, placed on the November ballot. The State Constitutional provision seems on its face to cover all kinds of votes, write-in votes as well as votes for a person whose name had been printed on the primary ballot.
