On February 24, the plaintiffs in the San Diego write-in lawsuit filed a notice of appeal to the California State Court of Appeals. Lawrence v Murphy. The issue is whether all of write-in votes cast for Donna Frye should be counted. The lower court had said write-ins could not be counted if the voter didn’t fill in the oval on the write-in line.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that on February 17, they asked the Oregon Secretary of State to file a brief, explaining why the Court shouldn’t accept Ralph Nader’s ballot access appeal. This is a good sign that the Court is interested in the case. Oregon had already told the Court last month that it didn’t wish to file a response. But now the Court has said, notwithstanding Oregon’s disinterest in responding, that Oregon ought to respond. The case is Kucera v Bradley, 04-872.
Yesterday, Kentucky HB141 passed the House unanimously and went to the Senate. It makes two minor improvements in the ballot access laws. It deletes the requirement that minor party and independent presidential candidates must file a declaration of candidacy on April 1 of an election year.
Also, it lets minor party and independent presidential candidate petitions circulate as early as the candidate or group wishes. Since Kentucky permits stand-ins on presidential petitions, this change lets minor parties circulate their presidential petitions in the year before a presidential election, if they wish to. Under the existing law, they may not begin until November of the year before the election.
Yesterday, the Louisiana Libertarian Party became a qualified party in that state. Under a law passed in 2004, any unqualified party that has at least 1,000 registered members, and which pays a one-time fee of $1,000, becomes a qualified party.
The Reform Party also has over 1,000 registered members in Louisiana, but it hasn’t paid its $1,000 fee yet. The Green Party is working to get its registration up to 1,000, and has about 900 now.
Being a qualified political party in Louisiana means that when members of the party run for public office, their party name is printed on the ballot next to their name. Louisiana prints party labels for all candidates for president. But for all other office, no party label is printed next to a candidate’s name, unless he or she is a member of a qualified party.
Today, Tennessee Representative Donna Rowland introduced HB1776. It is identical to SB1327 in the Tennessee State Senate, which was introduced two weeks ago. It permits candidates who use the independent candidate procedure to choose a partisan label (other than just “independent”) to be printed on the November ballot next to the candidate’s name.
