Early Voting Month in Primary Election – VOTE! (Updated Locations)

3 thoughts on “Early Voting Month in Primary Election – VOTE! (Updated Locations)”

1. You’re welcome. However, the provision still stands that he or I or anyone could have gotten the Green Party nomination as a write-in candidate with a “plurality” of the votes cast, meaning as few as one vote.

   I am running in the Americans Elect Party primary in the 4th Congressional District now as a write-in. (The Fourth is, like the Sixth District I ran as Green in back in 2010, an extremely safe Republican district with only 22% of the electorate being Democrats, so it’s impossible for me to prevent a Democrat from winning the seat.)

   Early voting has begun in Arizona’s Americans Elect Party primary, first in the nation:

   http://www.pinalcountyaz.gov/Departments/Elections/Documents/Downloads/2012%20Pinal%20County%20Primary%20Sample%20Ballots%20-%20AEL.pdf

   (Note that is in the 1st C.D. and there is no registered write-in candidate for any office in the Americans Elect party, but the county is putting out a ballot anyway.)

   Earlier this week,the Prescott Daily Courier had this on the 4th C.D. election:
   ”
   Three Republicans and two Democrats are seeking the new 4th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission created new boundaries for congressional and legislative districts early this year. The new 4th Congressional District includes Yavapai County (except part of the Verde Valley), most of the Colorado River country, and smaller parts of Gila, Maricopa and Pinal counties. While the 4th District seat technically has no incumbent, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar moved from Flagstaff in the 1st District to Prescott so he could run in the Republican-dominated 4th District instead of the 1st District that has a Democratic majority. Arizona Sen. Ron Gould and Rick Murphy, both of Lake Havasu City, are competing in the Republican primary against Gosar. Mikel Weisser of Golden Valley and Johnnie Robinson of Florence are facing off in the Democratic primary. Robinson has not responded to numerous requests for interviews. The two primary winners will face Independent Joe Pamelia of Prescott in the general election. They also might face Americans Elect Party write-in candidate Richard Grayson of Apache Junction. Grayson needs at least 137 write-in votes in the primary to get his name on the general election ballot, Secretary of State spokesman Matt Roberts said.”
   http://www.dcourier.com/m/Articles.aspx?ArticleID=109267

   But Roberts was wrong, apparently confusing being a “recognized” party with a “party entitled to continuous recognition.” I wrote to the Secretary of State’s office, explaining the statutory difference between the two and why it mattered for the number of write-in votes required in a primary. Only “parties entitled to continuous recognition” have primaries in which write-in candidates need a number of votes equal to those on ballot petition signatures; “new parties” need only one vote. (In case you are interested, and I know you think the law is unfair, it was imposed by federal court order in the case of Socialist Workers Party of Arizona v Mofford, US Dist Ct, civ 80-293 PHX CLH (July 22, 1980), which I also brought to the attention of the Election Division’s staff.

   I got this response to that query from Elections Division Director Amy Chan:

   “Regarding the number of votes needed for a write-in for a new party candidate, only a plurality is needed to advance to the General Election ballot. You are correct.”

   So that’s *two* points of election law someone in the Secretary of State’s office have gotten wrong. It’s not rocket science. I figured it out, and I’m not, as you know, very smart. But apparently I know Arizona election law better than the people in charge of it and the agency which runs elections, headed by our Secretary of State.
   Earlier this week,

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2. Good information to know. Thanks.

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3. Remember when you wrote back in the special election that you thought the lawsuit kicking Charlie Manolakis off the Green Party ballot would be successful? You were wrong in the result, but if the lawsuit had been brought for the correct reason, Manolakis never would have appeared on the April Green Party primary ballot and the June special election ballot with Barber and Kelly.

   Manolakis submitted 13 signatures. If you look at the Secretary of State’s website for signatures required for the ballot in April in the old CD 8, you’ll see he needed only 5 signatures:
   http://www.azsos.gov/election/2012/Special/Signature_Requirements_Special_Primary.pdf

   But check out the Green Party (and Americans Elect party) signature requirements for congressional districts in the August primary we’re now voting in:
   http://www.azsos.gov/election/2012/info/2012_new_party_sig_req.pdf
   See that in the new CD 2, a Green Party candidates needs not just 5, but 128 signatures! In other congressional districts, the signatures for Greens were between 64 and 137.

   Now 5 signatures versus 128 or so is a wide disparity. What happened between April, the special election filing deadline, and the end of May, the regular primary deadline?

   The answer is nothing — except the lawyers in Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s office totally misinterpreted the law and put down the wrong number of signatures for the special election. Here’s what Amy Chan, Elections Director, wrote me today in response to my query:

   “Regarding the number of signatures required for a Green candidate to qualify for the ballot, at the time the CD 8 signature requirements were calculated the law had just changed to enable the Green Party to maintain its recognized party status. Based on the change we treated the Greens as a “continued recognition” party when calculating those requirements. However, upon reviewing the change of law again prior to calculating signature requirements for the Primary Election, it became clear that although the law changed to allow the Green Party to continue as a recognized party, the law did not change the character of the Green Party to a “continued recognition” party with the associated lowered signature requirement. Therefore, we believe the better interpretation is to treat the Greens as a “new party” which was done for the Primary.”

   If Charlie Manolakis’ Green Party primary candidacy been challenged on the right grounds — he had an invalid number of signatures because the Secretary of State’s office misinterpreted the law — he might not have appeared on the ballot. (Of course he could have argued that it was reasonable to rely on the Secretary of State’s office mistake.)

   If they’d never gotten the number wrong, it’s more likely, however, that Charlie couldn’t have gotten the 100+ signatures.

   No one but me seemed to have noticed or cared about this discrepancy, but since you were upset because a Green candidate could have cost Barber the election, I thought you might be interested in this — and as well, how the Secretary of State’s office totally mishandled the situation. Maybe it will be helpful to any Democratic candidate running for Secretary of State in the next election.

   So, a sort of apology: You were certainly right in that Manolakis should have been kicked off the ballot.

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