The Boston Tea Party has a presidential and vice-presidential candidate who are on the ballot in three states, Colorado, Florida and Tennessee. The Boston Tea Party will also try to qualify for write-in status in Texas, for its national ticket. Texas law says write-in candidates for president were supposed to have filed their declaration of candidacy by August 26. But Texas law also says that ballot-qualified parties are supposed to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential tickets by August 26. The Democratic and Republican Parties missed this deadline, but on August 29, the Texas Secretary of State added their nominees to its web page anyway. Authority for the Texas leniency comes from two 1996 Texas Supreme Court decisions, Davis v Taylor and Bird v Rothstein. Those decisions say that when a party official makes a paperwork mistake, the candidates should not be punished for that mistake and must still be considered qualified.

Therefore, under the logic of the 1996 precedents, and by the logic of this year’s leniency for the major parties, the Texas Secretary of State, to be consistent, ought to accept late paperwork for declared write-in candidates. This is especially true, since there is no rational reason why the write-in deadline needs to be early anyway. The list of declared write-in presidential candidates does not impact on ballot printing.

In the meantime, the Constitution Party of Texas did file its write-in paperwork on August 20, but the Secretary of State lost it. The party has proof that the paperwork was received in the Secretary of State’s office. So far, the Texas Secretary of State has equivocated on whether she will accept the Constitution Party’s write-in presidential status.

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court said that it violates the First Amendment for a state to require that parties let non-members help choose their nominees (California Democratic Party v Jones). However, some states require an unqualified party to circulate petitions that carry the names of that party’s nominees. The language on these petitions typically says that the signers “hereby nominate” the candidates who are listed on the petition.

In 2006, the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties jointly filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania, which has no procedure for an unqualified party to place its nominees on the November ballot, except by a petition that lists the party’s candidates. The three parties argued that this system violates the core principle of California Democratic Party v Jones. However, the lawsuit lost. The 3rd circuit said that the miscellaneous voters on the street who sign the petition are not really nominating that party’s nominees.

The 3rd circuit said, at page 198 (the decision is at 468 F 3d 189), “Jones is not applicable to a ballot access case like the present one, in which internal party deliberations on the choice of party candidates are not implicated. Unlike the law at issue in Jones, Pennsylvania election law does not open the intra-party deliberations of minor political parties to persons who are unaffiliated with the party. Forced association caused by sec. 2911b occurs only as a minor party candidate solicits signatures from registered voters, who may be registered with any party or as an independent…In Pennsylvania, a minor political party is free to select anyone it chooses as its candidate.”

So, even though the Pennsylvania petitions have signature lines under a heading that says, “I hereby nominate…”, the court, in order to save the Pennsylvania law from a judgment of unconstitutionality, interpreted the procedure to mean that the petition signers are not nominating anyone. Instead, the 3rd circuit said, petition signers are saying only they want that party to be on the ballot. This interpretation will help the Libertarian Party with its pending lawsuits over whether it can have nominees on the November ballot who are different individuals than the individuals who had been listed on petitions.

Gloria La Riva, presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, reports on the situation in New Orleans, in this post dated August 31. She and her campaign manager came to Louisiana to file her ballot access paperwork, and they are now involved in helping with preparations for the storm.

The California Assembly, late on Saturday, August 30, concurred in the Senate amendments to AB 583, so the bill is now through the legislature. It sets up public funding for the Secretary of State’s race in 2014. The voters must vote on the idea, though, in 2010. As noted earlier, the bill requires twice as many qualifying contributions for independent candidates, as for Democrats and Republicans.

Ralph Nader’s success in getting on the Idaho ballot is noteworthy, because this had been one state in which he had never before been on the ballot. There are now only 4 states in which Nader has never been on the ballot: Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

In the past, and also this year, he will receive write-ins in Georgia, Indiana and North Carolina. Also he got write-ins in Idaho in the past. But Oklahoma prohibits write-in votes, so Oklahoma continues to be the only state in which Nader has never received any votes at all.

The lawsuit filed against Oklahoma this year by Bob Barr, to overturn the ballot access requirements, was filed on July 17. There is still no hearing date. Barr’s attorney, Jim Linger, will make a supreme effort in the next few days to get a hearing date established.

Although that it seems undisputed that both the Republican and Democratic Parties missed the August 26 Texas deadline for filing a certificate naming their presidential and vice-presidential nominees, there are two Texas Supreme Court decisions that say that candidates should not suffer the loss of ballot access due to the mistakes of state party officials. The cases are Davis v Taylor, 930 SW 2d 581, and Bird v Rothstein, 930 SW 2d 586. The first case put a Republican nominee for State Court of Appeals Justice on the November ballot; the second one put a Democratic nominee for state house on the November ballot.

Texas parties play a big role in Texas primary elections. Candidates running for a party nomination file declarations of candidacy with their party, not with any county or state official. Therefore, party officials have serious responsibilities for certifying various kinds of paperwork, and sometimes they make mistakes.

Given the Davis and Bird precedents, it seems plausible that Texas cannot enforce its law that requires unqualified parties to file a notice with the Secretary of State on January 2 of any election year, that it intends to petition later that year. The responsibility to file such a form rests with party officers. If they fail to file the form, but the party later submits a petition and nominates candidates, the candidates ought to be able to use the Davis and Bird precedents, along with any precedent created this year to help John McCain and Barack Obama, to avoid suffering any consequences for the failure to file the form. This policy also raises equal protection problems for the state, relative to independent candidates. In 2004, Ralph Nader submitted his independent presidential petition two weeks late. He submitted it on the more lenient deadline for minor party petitions, but the federal courts upheld the earlier deadline and kept Nader off the ballot.

The Republican Party challenge to Bob Barr’s Pennsylvania ballot position has been moved from September 4 to September 5 (Friday). It will be at 10 a.m. in Courtroom One, Widener Bldg., 1339 Chestnut St., Philadelphia. Experienced election law attorney Sam Stretton will be defending Barr. The objector does not dispute the validity of the statewide Libertarian petition. Instead, he says it was improper to use a stand-in presidential candidate in the period June and July, because by then the Libertarian Party knew who its real presidential candidate would be. But, under that theory, the party would have been stuck with two separate petitions, one listing Rochelle Etzel for president, and another one listing Bob Barr for president. Neither one would have had enough signatures, and there is no procedure for combining two different petitions with different names on them.

Stand-ins are well-recognized in Pennsylvania law. All petitions carry a substitution committee, which has the authority to appoint the new nominee after the stand-in withdraws.

Sarah Palin is a registered Republican. Her husband and her oldest son are also registered voters in Alaska, yet not registered members of any political party. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.

The first major party to nominate a woman for vice-president was the Democratic Party, in 1984. Now, in 2008, the Republican Party is also about to name a woman vice-presidential nominee.

The first major party to nominate a black for president or vice-president is the Democratic Party in 2008.

On the matter of diversity for presidential and vice-presidential nominees, the major parties are decades behind minor parties. The first minor party to name a woman for vice-president, and to actually receive valid votes, was the Prohibition Party in 1924. It named Marie Brehm for vice-president. The first minor party to name a woman for president, and to actually receive valid votes, was the Communist Party. It named Charlene Mitchell in 1968.

The first minor party to name a black for either president or vice-president, and to actually receive valid votes, was the Communist Party in 1932. It names James Ford for vice-president. The first minor party to name a black for president was the Socialist Workers Party, which nominated Clifton DeBerry in 1964.

Many have asserted that the Equal Rights Party of the late 19th century was the first minor party to set these records. But the Equal Rights Party did not actually nominate any candidates for presidential elector and then print up ballots naming those candidates for presidential elector. The party was free to do that, but did not do that. Svend Petersen, author of A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections, meticulously went through the records of the vote for presidential electors, sent in by each state to the National Archives. He found records for minor party tickets that polled as few votes as 72 votes in the entire nation. That was the national vote total for Gerrit Smith, the 1852 presidential nominee of the Liberty Party. But he found no votes for an Equal Rights ticket in either the 1870’s or the 1880’s. Other researchers came to the same conclusion.

On August 29, the California Senate passed AB 583, which sets up a pilot program for public funding. Specifically, it provides that in 2014, candidates for Secretary of State could receive public funding. Democrats and Republicans would need qualifying contributions from 7,500 people; independent candidates would need such contributions from 15,000 people. The bill is probably unconstitutional on that score, under this year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision Davis v Federal Election Commission.

AB 583 must now return to the Assembly, since the Senate version provides that funding for the program be from state income taxpayer voluntary check-offs (which would add to the taxpayers’ bill), whereas the Assembly had a different funding scheme. AB 583 passed the Senate 21-18. It needed 21 votes in order to pass.