This story states that only 10% of Americans think democracy in the United States is working “very or extremely well.” This is further evidence that the American public is open to electoral reform.
On a personal note, I marched in a parade with other FairVote Illinois volunteers on Saturday, July 1 in Palatine, Illinois, and was somewhat surprised at the extent of the positive reception for Ranked Choice Voting along the parade route.
On July 13, Texas businessman Mark Cuban said he would not seek to be the presidential nominee of No Labels. However, he says he supports No Labels. See this story. He also mentions that he supports the Center for Competitive Democracy, which is a group working to improve the nation’s ballot access laws. The Center for Competitive Democracy was founded by Oliver Hall, an attorney in Washington,, D.C., who has done many ballot access lawsuits and who is currently representing the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, or other minor parties in court in Indiana, New york, North Carolina, and Texas.
On July 13, the Arizona Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Arizona Secretary of State, alleging that the Secretary of State should remove No Labels Party from the ballot because it has not disclosed is donors. See this story.
In 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, ruled in Unity ’08 v FEC that new parties need not disclose their donors if they still don’t have any candidates. The whole purpose of campaign finance disclosure laws is to reveal ties between individuals and donors. In the case of parties that have never had candidates or office-holders, this rationale does not apply.
The Arizona Democratic Party, by its new filing, seems to suggest that the party has little hope of winning its lawsuit to get the No Labels Party off the ballot on the grounds that its ten representatives submitted their declarations too early.
Leaders of the Democratic Party continue saying they are worried that if Cornel West runs for president as the Green Party nominee, that will cause Donald Trump to win the 2024 election. Then they frequently assert that Jill Stein’s Green candidacy in 2016 caused Donald Trump to win that election. For example, this story says that a few days ago, David Axelrod said, “In 2016 the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump.”
If reporters would do a minimal amount of research, they could point out that the 2016 exit polls show that Hillary Clinton did not lose any state due to the Jill Stein vote. All they need to do is google “Jill Stein exit polls”. Even in Michigan, which was the closest state Trump carried in 2016, the exit polls show that only 25% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Hillary Clinton if Stein had not been running. And 14% of the Stein voters said they would have voted for Donald Trump if Stein had not been running. So in Michigan, Clinton only lost a net of 11% of the number of Stein voters, which was not enough to change the Michigan outcome.
Elite reporters and political strategists assume wrongly that most voters are ideological, as they themselves are. But political science research on voter behavior has long shown that a large share of voters are not ideological.
This story concerns the pending request by the New York Libertarian Party and the New York Green Party to the U.S. Supreme Court, that the Court hear their ballot access case. The lawsuit challenges the restrictive changes made to the New York ballot access laws in 2020.
The Court probably won’t decide whether to hear the case or not until late September, or possibly even later than that.
