See http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/local/64395.php for an Arizona daily newspaper story about Thursday’s court decision about who can vote in primaries.

Since 1991, West Virginia has had an election law that says candidates (other than independent candidates) must be registered members of the party that nominates them. On September 17, the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office informed the Mountain Party that if it wants to nominate a presidential candidate in 2008, that candidate must be a registered member of the Mountain Party.

In response, the Mountain Party pointed out that the Secretary of State had never enforced this law in the past against presidential candidates. If she had, George H. W. Bush, Ross Perot, George W. Bush, and Michael Badnarik, could not have appeared on the West Virginia ballot, since they all live in Texas and Texas has no registration by party. Similarly, Bill Clinton could not have appeared on the ballot, since Arkansas did not have registration by party. Also Ralph Nader could not have been the Green Party nominee in 2000 since he is a registered independent in Connecticut.

Also, the Mountain Party pointed out that the true candidates in November of presidential election years are the candidates for presidential elector. Presidential candidates’ names appear on the ballot in their capacity as labels for competing slates of presidential elector candidates, not as candidates per se. Article II of the U.S. Constitution compels this conclusion.

In response, the Secretary of State has said she will ask the legislature to amend the law, making it clear it doesn’t apply to presidential candidates. She is also free to seek an Attorney General’s Opinion, which might be simpler.

On September 27, a U.S. District Court in Arizona ruled in favor of the Libertarian Party, in a case that the party had filed in 2002. Arizona Libertarian Party v Brewer, 02-144-TUC. A link to the opinion is here. The decision says that if a party doesn’t want independents to vote in its primary, it is free to exclude them. In the case of the Arizona Libertarian Party, the party members are massively outnumbered by registered independents, approximately 18,000 to 600,000. The court cited the party’s 2002 primary in the First District for the U.S. House. A non-Libertarian who advocated nationalized health care entered the party’s primary. Party leaders then recruited a candidate who actually supports the party platform. Although the candidate who supported the party platform won the primary 286-243 over the candidate who didn’t support the party platform, the judge ruled that letting independents vote in the party’s primary could easily have tilted the outcome. The decision also notes that a U.S. District Court in Virginia had ruled that Republicans in that state have a constitutional right to exclude non-members. The decision did not mention the more recent similar decision from Mississippi on behalf of Mississippi Democrats.

On September 27, a Superior Court in Alameda County, California, ruled that Berkeley’s Measure R must be placed on the ballot in November 2008. It had been on the ballot in November 2004 and had been defeated by a very narrow margin. When backers of the initiative asked for a recount, it turned out that the data inside the electronic vote-counting equipment had already been deleted. The court ruled that due process requires that since a recount could not be done, the initiative must have another chance.

According to this story, backers of a California initiative to let each U.S. House district elect its own elector have dropped their plans to qualify that initiative for the ballot. Lack of funds is the chief cause.

According to this newspaper story, the proposed initiative to provide that each California U.S. House district choose its own elector has started circulating. Democrats have denounced it loudly, but no Democrat seems to suggest that Democrats might circulate similar initiatives in “red” states. 17 states that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 have the initiative process, including Florida and Ohio. The 17 states have a combined total of 130 electoral votes.

On September 24, GOOOH (Get Out of Our House!) endorsed HR 3600, the congressional bill to outlaw restrictive ballot access laws in congressional elections. Ron Paul had endorsed it on September 19. The bill has now been introduced in 9 sessions of Congress.

GOOOH is a new organization that wants to run, or to endorse, a non-major party candidate for U.S. House in all districts in the nation in 2008. This goal mirrors Unity08’s goal, except that Unity08 only wants to concentrate on the presidential election, but GOOOH wants to concentrate only on the U.S. House. For more information about GOOOH, see www.goooh.com. Thanks to the commenter below who corrected the web address for me.

The September 27 New York Times has this op-ed by regular columnist Gail Collins, severely criticizing the national Democratic Committee for stripping Florida of all its delegates. Collins also ridicules the leading Democratic presidential candidates for promising not to campaign in Florida between October 1 and February 1, except to attend fund-raisers. See it here.

On September 26, the Arkansas Green Party turned in 17,197 signatures. Assuming there are at least 10,000 valid signatures, the Green Party will then be a qualified party in Arkansas, able to nominate for all partisan office in the state, by convention.

The Arkansas Libertarian Party expects to turn in its presidential party petition on September 27. That type of petition entitles a group to be ballot-qualified just for the presidential election, and only requires 1,000 signatures. The Arkansas Constitution Party will also be turning in that type of petition shortly.

The Oklahoma legislature is not in session until next year. On September 25, an Oklahoma Democratic legislator said he will introduce a bill next year to make it a crime for anyone to pay a petition circulator on a “per signature” basis. The legislator, Rep. Mike Shelton, represents the 97th district in Oklahoma City.

He said, “We can’t continue to incentivize lying to the public about the issues. When a signature collector gets paid according to the number of signatures he collects, what’s to stop him from misrepresenting the issue to the public to get them to sign his petition? These matters are too important to allow snake-oil salesmen to bend the facts and flat-out lie just to fatten their paychecks.”

The implication of Shelton’s remarks is that the ordinary citizen is so stupid and gullible that he or she will sign any petition without looking at it first. Current Oklahoma law requires the title of the Initiative (which is written by the Attorney General) to appear in large print. Many legislators, judges and political commentators believe in their hearts that ordinary people are too uninformed and unthoughtful to be trusted at the voting box. This is the real reason why democratic practices in the U.S. are not secure…many of the most influential and powerful in the U.S., in their hearts, don’t believe in popular control of government. Therefore, they are eroding popular control of government, little by little, with laws and practices that reduce the political power of ordinary people.