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.
On July 12, the Nebraska Supreme Court refused to hear Rodgers v Heineman. This was the case filed by voters who wish to have their write-ins counted for Tom Osborne for Governor, in November. Osborne had lost the Republican primary in May. He has no interest in being a write-in candidate in November, but his passionate supporters wanted to cast a write-in for him anyway. State law says only write-ins cast for someone who filed a write-in declaration of candidacy will be counted. Also, another law won’t let primary losers file such a declaration of write-in candidacy.
On July 12, the Nebraska Supreme Court refused to hear Rodgers v Heineman. This was the case filed by voters who wish to have their write-ins counted for Tom Osborne for Governor, in November. Osborne had lost the Republican primary in May. He has no interest in being a write-in candidate in November, but his passionate supporters wanted to cast a write-in for him anyway. State law says only write-ins cast for someone who filed a write-in declaration of candidacy will be counted. Also, another law won’t let primary losers file such a declaration of write-in candidacy.
On July 14, influential Democratic and Republican state legislators and party officials agreed to work for a different type of presidential primary in Michigan in 2008 and future elections.
Past Michigan presidential primaries have been secret-party- choice primaries. However, what is likely for 2008 is a presidential primary in which the voter must publicly choose a particular party’s primary ballot. Both types of primary are “open primaries” under the classic definition of “open primary”.
Under the 2008 proposal, the parties will then have access to the list of voters that chose their party’s primary. The bill to accomplish this change hasn’t been introduced yet, but it is about to be introduced.
Although Michigan has 6 qualified parties, only the Democratic and Republican Parties have their own primaries; the other qualified parties nominate by convention. The Democratic and Republican Parties want a presidential primary in which voters must publicly choose the primary ballot they wish to vote in. They feel that, under such a system, “strategic voting” will be minimized. Democrats believe that the old secret-party-choice system was responsible for George Wallace winning their 1972 primary (Democrats believe that many Republicans voted for Wallace, just to make trouble for the Democratic Party).
