It’s a trick question. The next presidential primary is happening right now.

The Illinois Green Party is holding an open presidential primary online. The online primary started on February 1 and ends on February 16.

To be eligible, voters need to be residents of Illinois, and above the age of 12. I did a bit of a doubletake myself when I saw that age requirement, but it’s true: The Illinois Green Party allows all teenagers to vote in its presidential primary.

A person does not have to be previously registered as Green to vote in the Illinois Green Party primary. Registrations are accepted at the same time as voting.

This means that eager teenage citizens in Illinois, jumping at the chance to vote before the rest of their cohort, could have a major impact on the selection of the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

Green Party caucuses are also being held across the state of Illinois, but these do not include a binding vote. They’re more like voter outreach events. One is being held in Wheaton this afternoon from between 3:00 and 5:00 at 213 South Wheaton Ave.

Who could withstand the onslaught of warm air and occasional drizzle? But they should have known. The Washington state legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage on February 8, and the day before that a court in California struck down laws against same-sex marriage. This punishment through horrible warmness and light rain is the natural outcome.

At least that’s what fundamentalist Christian leaders John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Stephen Bennett and John Piper and Graham Dow and Yehuda Levin say. They say that weather is God’s divine judgment against communities embracing sodomicious equal rights. So yea, people of Seattle, tho ye quaver and ye shake yon fisties at the heavens, know this is a Mighty Tepid Mist of DOOM! Los Angeles, you’re next! In a few weeks! Maybe!

Actually, two different GOP presidential candidates won the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, and events proved Americans Elect wrong just four days later when a third GOP candidate won the South Carolina primary, tossing the GOP race up for grabs.

That didn’t stop Americans Elect from trying the same line again. In a news release dated February 2, just two days after Mitt Romney won his second primary victory, Americans Elect seemed to be eager to declare him the GOP winner already so it could recast itself as the democratic alternative:

Only four states have had a chance to vote in the GOP primaries, but experts are saying the process is over. Are voters happy?

But actual democracy soon intervened again to counter the Americans Elect narrative. On February 7, voters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri handed election victories to Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney. Now Mitt Romney has won the majority of delegates, Rick Santorum has won the majority of states, while Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are continuing to campaign through the Super Tuesday primaries of March 6. By the end of that night Republican voters in 21 states will have cast their votes. In short, the GOP nomination looks to be an actual election involving large numbers of voters.

Whatever number of people have voted in the Republican presidential nomination process, it seems to not be enough to meet Americans Elect’s standards. Back in January, Americans Elect complained about “Only 369,448 Votes” in Iowa and New Hampshire. But with the addition of South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, there have now been 3,022,769 votes cast.

In contrast, Americans Elect has had its own online presidential nomination ballot qualification vote going on around the clock for nine full days now. How many cumulative votes has it attracted over those 9 days, and what has the cumulative vote count in the Republican race been? Results as of this morning:

Only 6,429 votes had been cast in the Americans Elect process, just two-tenths of one percent of the participation in the Republican process. If 369,448 votes are meager, what does that make 6,429 votes? The disparity is cast in starker terms when one realizes that in the Americans Elect process, one person can vote many times. The actual number of people participating in the Americans Elect process, despite media coverage in every major TV network and newspaper, is even smaller than the number of votes.

The vote totals for particular Americans Elect contenders tell an even bleaker picture: unless Americans Elect changes its voting procedure in the middle of the voting — a highly irregular move — it doesn’t look as though anyone will qualify for the Americans Elect ballot at all. According to the rules published during the first day of the ballot qualification vote, political insiders will have to obtain 10,000 votes of support and political outsiders will have to obtain 50,000 votes of support by May 15. By that standard, with 9 days gone and 96 days left to go, only Ron Paul (with 1,372 votes of support as of this morning) is on pace to obtain 10,000 votes by May 15.

But wait, there’s more. Even Ron Paul isn’t actually on pace to get on the Americans Elect ballot, because there’s a second standard he has to meet. For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, only the first thousand votes for a candidate in a state will be counted toward the 10,000 vote total, and only the ten states with the most votes will count have their votes counted toward that 10,000 vote total. The 10,000 votes have to consist of 1,000 votes in each of 10 and only 10 states. As of now, these are the top ten states from which Ron Paul has received support in the Americans Elect vote:

California: 144 votes
Texas: 107 votes
Florida: 97 votes
New York: 73 votes
Virginia: 58 votes
Pennsylvania: 54 votes
Ohio: 48 votes
Michigan: 44 votes
Washington: 43 votes
Illinois: 42 votes

Did you notice that these are the most populous states of the United States? That’s not a coincidence; for all its talk of democracy, the Americans Elect process effectively disenfranchises small states, which with smaller populations are unlikely to scrape together 1,000 votes for anybody. It’s the big states that will either qualify or not qualify a candidate for the Americans Elect nomination. At this rate, with 9 days gone and 96 left to go, Ron Paul will only get 1,000 votes in California, Texas and Florida by May 15.

And the other Americans Elect draft candidates? Insider or outsider, they aren’t on pace to get 1,000 votes of support in any state at all.

The bottom line is that while Americans Elect corporate leaders complain about lack of participation in the Republican nomination, the Americans Elect vote is far, far less popular. To deal with its lack of support, Americans Elect will have to mount a huge publicity campaign very soon, or it will have to change the rules of its voting in the middle of its vote, or it will have to benefit from a well-funded candidate who decides to invest significant funds, or it will have to leave its ballot empty in 2012.

Sarasota, Florida, June 16 2011: Mitt Romney appears at Sarasota Yacht Club private fundraiser.

Naples, Florida, November 28 2011: Mitt Romney appears at Naples Yacht Club private fundraiser.

Portland Maine, February 10 2012: Mitt Romney to make his sole campaign stop in the state, appearing at Portland Yacht Services and Marina. Don’t worry, transients are welcome there: “We offer both seasonal mooring/dockage as well as berthing for transient yachts.”

Rick Santorum: 55.2%
Mitt Romney: 25.3%
Ron Paul: 12.2f%
Rick Perry: 1.0%
Herman Cain: 0.9%
Michele Bachmann: 0.7%
Jon Huntsman: 0.4%

Yes, Virginia, there are about 1,045 Jon Huntsman supporters in Missouri. And where’s Newt Gingrich? His campaign was so disorganized that he didn’t get around to qualifying for ballot access in the state. $1,000 and a signature would have been all it took. Oops.

We could stop here and marvel at the significant victory for that scrappy campaigner, but why stop here? Missouri is not just one place. St. Louis is different from Branson, which is not exactly Hannibal. So let’s look at who won where across the state with the following map of Republican Primary results for every county in the state of Missouri. Where Newt Gingrich won, you’ll see an Open sign (except that, of course, he didn’t file his papers, did he? Oops again). Where Mitt Romney won, you’ll see a shiny plastic duck. And where Rick Santorum won, you’ll be treated to the sight of a creamy brownish frothy mixture.

In Missouri, they’re all about the creamy brownish froth.

For those Minnesotans who are looking for a more compassionate political agenda, there’s the Green Party. The Green Party of Minnesota is holding caucuses of its own. The Green caucuses will be held in 23 locations across the state of Minnesota, in communities like Brainerd, Lake Elmo, and Edina – not just in downtown Minneapolis.

It’s been an abnormally warm winter this year, not just in Minnesota, but across almost all of the United States. Of course, that’s just one year’s weather. However, the long-term climate appears to have warmed as well. Climate data show that there hasn’t been an abnormally cold winter in a very long time.

What’s more, the scientific evidence that human beings are to blame for global warming has continued to grow in size and scope. A new study of the relationship of energy output from the sun to atmospheric absorption of energy shows that the sun cannot be to blame for global warming, as some pollution industry advocates suggest. Even a scientific review funded by the Republican Koch brothers, with the purpose of debunking the anthropogenic hypothesis of global warming, determined that the anthropogenic hypothesis is valid, and that there has not been any global scientific conspiracy to distort scientific data in order to create the false appearance of a global warming crisis.

Scientific research has delivered a thoroughly substantiated, double-triple-quadruple checked, explanation for the reality of global warming: Human activities are to blame for it. The facts behind this analysis apply in Minnesota as much as anywhere else on Earth.

Yet, the current political platform of the Minnesota Republican Party pretends that these facts simply don’t exist. The Minnesota GOP platform currently includes the following statement: “We oppose policies, legislation and mandates that are based on the theory that humans are responsible for global climate change including the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming.” Minnesota Republicans seem to be saying that they don’t care what scientific information is available. They just don’t want to deal with the issue.

Today, the Minnesota Republicans has the opportunity to correct this irresponsible position of willful ignorance and inaction. In local meetings across Minnesota, Republican voters can do much more than just vote for the Republican presidential candidate of their choice. Voters in local caucuses will also have the power to propose changes to the political platform of the Minnesota Republican Party.

In Rochester, in St. Paul, in Duluth, in Grand Forks… somewhere in Minnesota, one decent Republican voter can propose today that the GOP in Minnesota stop its opposition to solutions to the immense and growing problem of climate change. That voter’s caucus can then do the right thing, and approve that platform change for consideration by the statewide Republican Party.

Will that voter step forward today? Will the Minnesota Republican Party step forward and deal with reality?

She is now out of the Republican presidential race, but Michele Bachmann is not out of Minnesota politics – not by a longshot. Bachmann still has a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and she is running for re-election.

Later today, the Minnesota caucuses will take place, as the state decides which Republican presidential candidate it wants its delegates to support. The caucuses brought Bachmann back to my mind, so I decided to take a look at the Democratic opponent to her congressional re-election campaign.

There isn’t any Democrat in the race. The only person opposing Bachmann is Aubrey Immelman, a college professor who is proposing a kind of economic conservatism combined with relative moderation on some other issues.

Why haven’t the Minnesota Democrats found a candidate in the 6th congressional district? In the presidential contest, Bachmann established herself as an out-of-the-mainstream candidate who could not sustain broad political support. That makes her vulnerable, to an intelligent opponent. The Minnesota Democrats ought to be jumping at the chance to get Michele Bachmann finally out of the picture.

It’s not too late for a Democratic challenger to jump in the race, but the time is getting short, and while the Democrats dawdle, Bachmann has been preparing for quite some time.

O’Neal was quoting Psalm 109 from the Christian Bible, which is a prayer for divine revenge, including death and destruction for an enemy. Psalm 109 reads, “Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise, for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me. They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries, but I give myself unto prayer, and they have rewarded me evil for good, hatred for my love. Set thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. Let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath, and let the strangers spoil his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: Neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him. As he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones. Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and of them that speak evil against my soul.”

It goes on, and on, with dreary verses of self-pity and vengefulness, in which the author moans in self pity that nobody loves him, and everybody hates him, and that he should be exalted, while the people he hates should be cursed. Anyone who says that the message of the Bible is a consistent message of love should remember this part of the text. In citing Psalm 109, Mike O’Neal is not just hoping that Barack Obama dies soon. O’Neal is praying that Obama’s daughters never have any children, and that wander the country homeless, without receiving pity from anyone of whom they ask help.

In an odd part of the protest against Mike O’Neal’s cursing prayer against Barack Obama, two Christian ministers from Kansas, Tobias Schlingensiepen and Jim McCollough, are saying that they condemn O’Neal’s prayer because they are Christians. They write in an open letter, “As people of faith, we believe that Scripture should never be used to justify praying for the death of anyone. Speaker O’Neal’s hateful abuse of Scripture is unacceptable and a disgrace to his office, and he should immediately resign.”

The thing is that Psalm 109 clearly does justify praying for the death of other people. The cursing prayer is right there in the Bible, so it’s difficult to see how being “people of faith” has anything to do with rejection of violent prayer. Right there in the Psalms, a person of faith prays for death and destruction with pity. Schlingensiepen and McCollough say that O’Neal is abusing the Bible, but actually, O’Neal was soft-pedalling the Bible by not citing Psalm 109′s most nasty bits.

Furthermore, Schlingensiepen and McCollough are themselves pursuing a nasty path of Christian theocracy as they state that it is unacceptable for anyone in public office to “abuse” the Bible, to cite their holy text in a way that they don’t approve of. That’s establishing a religious test for public office, which is specifically prohibited by the Constitution of the United States of America. Schlingensiepen and McCollough are preaching their own version of religion in government to condemn O’Neal’s version of religion in government. That’s a maneuver as morally inconsistent as that of the writer of the 109th Psalm, who curses his enemy for cursing.

As for O’Neal, he has made his prayer, and in doing so, he has offered a simple public test of the power of prayer. O’Neal has prayed to his god that Barack Obama should have few days left in office. If prayer really works, then Obama should indeed have few days remaining as President of the United States.

How many is a few? Three? Seven? Twenty?

Few is a vague term, but I think that most people would agree that few definitely refers to a number less than one hundred.

So, that’s a pretty fair standard for evaluating Mike O’Neal’s prayer, I think. If Barack Obama is no longer President 100 days from now, we won’t be able to know whether the prayer was responsible. However, if Obama is still President of the United States 100 days from now, O’Neal’s prayer will have proved to be ineffective. If Obama’s days as President are not few, O’Neal will have significant cause to question the validity of his religion.

We know that one of the Green presidential candidates, Jill Stein, was at the nominating convention yesterday, on her way to join the Occupy The Super Bowl protests in Indianapolis this afternoon. The Ohio Green Party has not reported whether other candidates were at the convention, and has not officially released the results on its web site or anywhere else.

This morning, however, Elaine Mastromatteo, District 7 representative to the State Committee, wrote to me of Jill Stein that “After meeting her I can say that she is a warm, caring, engaging individual with a real plan, the Green New Deal, to help ordinary Americans in this time of partisan gridlock and corporate domination.” Stein, Mastromatteo says, won the Ohio vote, and “received our overwhelming support and the presidential nomination.”

If you want to see a strong, responsible liberal candidate for President in 2012, join Ohio, and show your support for the Jill Stein for President campaign. You can get involved with your state’s Green Party, and you can also wear one of our Jill Stein for President buttons to spread the word wherever you walk.