Ohio Supreme Court Puts Constitution Party Candidate on Primary Ballot, Sets Valuable Precedent

March 31st, 2010

On March 31, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that Robert Owens should be on the Constitution Party’s primary ballot for Attorney General. Owens needed 500 valid signatures. The various counties checked his petitions and sent the results into the Secretary of State, who tallied the results and said he only had 481 valid signatures. Here is the 15-page decision, State ex rel Owens v Brunner, 2010-1374.

The Court found that Franklin County (which contains Columbus) did not follow the Secretary of State’s instructions, and improperly invalidated far too many of Owens’ signatures. Ohio petitions forms, unfortunately, do not include a space for the signer to print his or her name. Many people have illegible cursive signatures. To remedy this, Ohio petition forms ask signers to print their address. Elections officials are supposed to use the address to identify signers whose cursive signatures can’t be read. But Franklin County did not do that.

Ohio elections officials, for at least 20 years, have done a poor job of checking signatures on petitions. Typically, petitions in Ohio need twice as many signatures as the legal requirement, to be declared valid. This decision is of great importance, far beyond just the specific outcome that Robert Owens will now be on the Constitution Party’s primary ballot. The vote was 6-1. The dissenter said that because absentee voting has already started, on ballots that omit Owens, therefore the decision is a mistake. But both the majority and the dissenter agreed that the Ohio legislature should provide for an earlier petition deadline, to give election officials more time to do a good job of checking petitions. Thanks to Robert Owens for this news.



Missouri Primary Ballots in One U.S. House Race Will Include Two Republicans, Two Libertarians, and No Others

March 31st, 2010

Filing has now closed for Missouri primaries, which are held on August 3 this year. In the U.S. House race, 9th district, two Republicans filed, and two Libertarians, but no Democrats and no one from the Constitution Party. See this story.

To see the complete candidate list, see the Missouri Secretary of State’s web page here. There are two statewide races in Missouri this year. The two qualified minor parties, Libertarian and Constitution, will each have a U.S. Senate nominee. In the other statewide race, for Auditor, there will be a Libertarian, but no one from the Constitution Party. The Libertarian Party must poll 2% in one of the two statewide races or it will lose its qualified status. The Constitution Party need not worry about polling 2% for a statewide race in 2010, because it polled 2% for one of the statewide races in 2008, and in Missouri, when a party passes the vote test, it remains on for the next two elections.

The Green Party, which is not ballot-qualified, is petitioning for party status this year. That petition needs 10,000 signatures and is due in late July. If the petition drive succeeds, the Green Party will be able to nominate by convention for any partisan race. In Missouri, the name of the Green Party is “Progressive Party.”

U.S. Supreme Court Puts Petitioning at Polls Case on April 16 Conference

March 31st, 2010

The U.S. Supreme Court has put Citizens for Police Accountability v Browning, 09-861, on its April 16, 2010 conference. The decision on whether the court will hear the case will not be released until April 19 at the earliest. Sometimes the court mulls over whether to take a case, and then postpones making a quick decision and sets it for another conference.

This is the case from Florida, over whether it is constitutional for a state to let exit pollsters stand within 25 feet of a polling place location, but which won’t let petitioners stand within 100 feet. Both groups only wish to speak to voters on their way out of the polling place.

Republican Congressional Candidate Gets on New Mexico Primary Ballot Despite Republican Party Hostility

March 31st, 2010

Adam Kokesh has qualified for the New Mexico Republican primary ballot for the U.S. House race, district 3. He did so by collecting a number of additional signatures equal to 2% of the number of votes cast in the 2008 Republican primary for Governor in that district. He had already collected the same number of signatures before the preprimary convention.

If he had been recognized as having received 20% support at the party’s preprimary convention, he would not have needed that second batch of signatures. He got slightly more than 19.5% of the vote at that convention. New Mexico election code section 1-1-20, titled “Major Fractions” says, “In any place in the Election Code requiring counting or computation of numbers, any fraction or decimal greater than one-half of a whole number shall be counted as a whole number.” The Democratic Party of New Mexico this year interpreted that to mean that a candidate at the Democratic convention who got 19.69% of the delegate vote should be deemed to have received 20%, but the Republican Party does not follow the “Major Fractions” law.

New Anti-Immigration Political Party

March 31st, 2010

Late last year, William D. Johnson and others announced the formation of a new political party, called the American Third Position. It has filed for status as a political body in California, but otherwise does not seem to have carried out any ballot access work.

The party’s web page is here. The program says, “We will stop all immigration into America, except in special cases.” The party’s logo includes the figure of Charles Lindbergh.

Federal Court Asked to Stop Special Election for Columbia, South Carolina City Council

March 31st, 2010

Columbia, South Carolina is holding its regular election for city officers on April 6. One city council district, district 2, was not scheduled to have an election this year. However, the incumbent resigned abruptly on March 9. The city then set a special election for that district for April 6, giving candidates only 4 days to file.

On March 29, a federal lawsuit was filed to stop the special election. See this story. Plaintiffs charge that the election cannot be fair because potential candidates had such a narrow window in which to file. However, the basis for the federal lawsuit is that the city has changed its procedures for this special election and did not pre-clear those changes with the U.S. Justice Department. Absentee voting had already started for the regularly city election, and voters who already voted, who live in District 2, were given ballots that didn’t even include the special election.

Recent Challenge to a Pennsylvania Primary Petition May Have Used State Government Resources

March 31st, 2010

In Pennsylvania, candidates seeking a place on a partisan primary ballot must submit petitions. The Pennsylvania primary this year is May 18. In Pennsylvania, elections officials assume that all petitions that contain, on their face, at least many signatures as are legally required, are valid.

However, any private individual who is a member of the same party may challenge any candidate’s primary ballot petition. The Democratic Party petition for one candidate for State Representative, 175th district, has been challenged. The challenged candidate is Daryl LaFountain. LaFountain has just learned that the challenge to his petition was submitted by fax, and that the fax machine used is the state government-owned fax machine in the district office of the incumbent. The incumbent, Representative Michael O’Brien, is running for re-election. On March 29, LaFountain’s attorney filed a motion with the court that is hearing the challenge to LaFountain’s petition. The motion asks that the challenge be dismissed because the objector is using state government resources for the challenge. It will be interesting to see what happens next. The formal name of the challenge in court is: In re The Nomination Petitions and Papers of Daryl La Fountain, 235 MD 2010.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorializes Against Ohio Secretary of State’s Last Minute Effort to Require Party Loyalty Oaths

March 31st, 2010

The March 31 issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer has this editorial, criticizing Ohio Secretary of State’s recent directive that changes the rules on which party’s primary ballot a voter may select in the May 2010 primary. As the editorial says, Ohio is an open primary state, meaning that the voter registration form does not ask voters to choose a party. But the Secretary of State’s directive says that if someone voted in one party’s primary in 2008, that same voter can’t choose a different party’s primary in 2008 unless that voter signs a declaration of loyalty to that party’s ideas.

Raw Story Says FEC Commissioner Mislead Federal Court in Sworn Testimony

March 30th, 2010

Raw Story published this article on March 30. It alleges that Caroline Hunter, who is a Federal Election Commissioner in her first term, acted unethically in 2004 by providing misleading testimony to a federal court in New Jersey.

In 1987 the Republican National Committee had signed a consent decree, promising not to “engage in, nor assist or participate in any ballot security programs” that had not been pre-cleared by the judge in that 1987 case. That case had been filed in New Jersey because it concerned Republican attempts to challenge voters in Newark, New Jersey. A “ballot security program” means a mass mailing by the Republican Party to registered voters in a certain area, designed to develop a list of voters to challenge on election day at the polls. The party would challenge a voter if the postal mail sent by the party to that voter had been returned by the post office.

In 2004, the Democratic Party believed that the Republican National Committee was again helping a ballot security program, this time in Ohio. The Democratic Party sued the Republican National Committee, alleging that the RNC was violating the 1987 consent decree. The case returned to the federal court in New Jersey. Caroline Hunter, who was then an attorney for the RNC, filed an affidavit saying “The RNC is not initiating, controlling, or funding any programs of voter challenges, including the effort by the Ohio Republican Party to challenge voter registrations in Ohio.” However, in the 2004 case, the court ruled that the RNC was participating in the Ohio challenge. This story is only news now because Raw Story and writer Brad Jacobson noticed that Caroline Hunter seems to have provided a misleading affidavit in the 2004 court case, which is news because she is now one of the six Federal Election Commissioners.

Connecticut Secretary of State Deposition in Election Law Lawsuit May Have Two Video Cameras

March 30th, 2010

According to this story in the Hartford Courant, Connecticut Secretary of State Sysan Bysiewicz, a Democrat, will have her deposition taken on March 30, for the lawsuit over whether she is qualified to be Attorney General (the office she is seeking this year). There is a lawsuit because a Connecticut statute says the Attorney General must have been actively practicing law during the past 10 years. Bysiewicz is an attorney but it is not clear whether she has been actively practicing law, in her capacity as Secretary of State for almost 8 years.

Secretary Bysiewicz has asked permission to have her own video photographer tape the proceedings. It had already been arranged that her deposition will be taped, but by a camera that is only trained on Bysiewicz. She wants another tape, in which the camera is trained on the attorney for the Republican Party as he asks the questions.

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Welcome to the OFFICIAL online home of Ballot Access News, a non-partisan newsletter reporting on the trials and tribulations of folks trying to put candidates on the ballot in the United States of America. There are many surprisingly restrictive ballot access laws in this country, which the average voter has no knowledge or conception of; part of our purpose here (besides reporting on progress made) is to report on these restrictive ballot access laws so that more people are aware of them. I hope you find these materials interesting and exciting; if you do, you can support the newsletter by subscribing!

Ballot Access News is edited and published by Richard Winger, the nation's leading expert on ballot access legal issues.

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  • Politics, Soviet-style by S. Philip Gordon, regarding recent ballot access issues in Georgia – the US state, not the Russian territority!

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  • Here's information on Presidential Ballot Access as well as the vote totals of recent Presidential elections.

  • Here are some other sites which may also be of interest:

    Project Vote-Smart

    Project Vote Smart is a citizens' organization dedicated to serving all Americans with accurate and unbiased information for electoral decision-making. It was inaugerated in 1992 by former US Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and other leaders. Its webpage offers information about all ballot-listed candidates for all federal and state office.
    [Added:040729]

    The ACE Project
    An interesting site concerning itself with the "Administration and Cost of Elections", including issues of fairness and regulatory approaches in various countries. They seem to be almost blind to the ways that third parties in the USA are harmed by campaign finance rules crafted for the problems characteristic of the larger parties, or the ways that third parties would be disenfranchised by various proposed rules, but this is nevertheless a useful resource, particularly for the international comparisons it makes.
    [Added:001206]

    "Unofficial" B.A.N. Page

    At first, it looks like there's not much here. But then you follow the "Charts" link, and click on one of the listed candidates, and you'll get some truly wonderful nationwide maps of voting patterns.
    [Checked:991014]

    ThirdPartyNews.net

    A site that covers news about minor parties.
    [Checked:060414]

    Third Party Central

    Collects lots of good information and links relating to various third parties into one convenient location. Nice set of writings on why one should vote third-party.
    [Checked:991014]

    Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

    A surprisingly complete listing of votes cast in Presidential elections, including numerous third-party candidates and nice maps of vote distribution by state and (on the individual state pages) by county.
    [New-URL:010309]

    D.C.'s Political Report

    Very good presentation of candidate and party information, including virtually every known third-party group in the USA. Election results, candidate information, etc.
    [Updated:991214]

    Initiative For Texas

    A group trying to establish the right to Initiative and Referendum in Texas. Their work has intriguing parallels and overlaps with ballot access work. Every page at the site seems to have some music on it, which can get annoying after awhile, but otherwise it's an interesting site.
    [Checked:991014]

    Center for Voting and Democracy

    Folks concerned with alternative voting systems, and related issues, from a moderately leftist perspective. Useful articles describing how better systems of voting and electing actually work.
    [Added:000823]

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