Ballot Access News

Alabama holds an election for U.S. Senate in 2014. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions is running for re-election. For the first time in Alabama history, the Democrats are not running anyone for U.S. Senate. Here is a list of Democrats running in the June 2014 primary for federal and state office.

There are no Democrats running for U.S. House in the 4th and 5th districts. For the 140 state legislative races, no Democrats are running in 57 races. There are no Democrats running for these additional statewide posts: Justice of the Supreme Court, Public Service Commissioner seat #1, and Public Service Commissioner seat #2.

Because of Alabama’s severe ballot access laws, it is likely that no minor party or independent candidate will be on the ballot for U.S. Senate or any other statewide race in Alabama either. The petition deadline in midterm years is more lenient than it is in presidential election years. In 2014, it is due June 3, but 44,829 valid signatures are required. If a minor party could get on the ballot for U.S. Senate, chances are that it would poll 20%, which would put it on the ballot automatically for 2016.

Meanwhile, the Alabama House Constitution and Elections Committee has passed HB 268, which moves the independent petition deadline from primary day, to the day on which major party candidates file for the primary. If the bill were to pass, in 2016 the independent petition deadline (for office other than president) would move from March to December of the year before the election. Even the March petition deadline is at risk of being held unconstitutional, and a deadline of December of the year before would obviously be unconstitutional. HB 268 is sponsored by Representative David Standridge (R-Hayden). Primary candidates in Alabama do not need to petition for a place on the ballot; they pay a filing fee. HB 268 not only moves the deadline months earlier, it requires independent candidates to pay a filing fee.

On March 7, 2013, some Republican candidates and a Republican voter sued Sandoval County, New Mexico, election officials for voter suppression. Specifically, the lawsuit charged that the County Clerk, who is a Democrat, arranged to have so few voting machines in Rio Rancho (a Republican-leaning city in Sandoval County), that some voters had to wait in line as much as five hours.

The case, Fleming v Gutierrez, 1:13cv-222, is still undecided, almost a year after it was first filed. U.S. District Court Judge William P. Johnson, an appointee of George W. Bush, has denied all attempts by the county to have the case dismissed on procedural grounds. Officials of the Secretary of State’s office have filed affidavits saying that if the county had asked for more voting machines, they would have been furnished. However, the case is taking so long to resolve, the plaintiffs’ request that certain election outcomes from the November 2012 election be reversed seem likely to soon become moot. Some of the plaintiffs had been Republican nominees who had narrowly been defeated, and they had argued that without the voting problem, they likely would have won. For more details about the case, see here.

As previously noted, on February 7 a Superior Court in Washington, D.C., refused to order the D.C. Board of Elections to put the office of Attorney General on the April 1, 2014 primary ballot, even though in 2010 the voters passed a charter amendment that said, as described on the ballot, that if passed, the voters could choose an Attorney General in 2014. Here is a link to the 7-page order in Zukerberg v D.C. Board of Elections, 2013 CA 8004B. Paul Zukerberg, who petitioned for a place on the Democratic primary ballot for Attorney General earlier this year, has appealed to the D.C. Appeals Court.