The New Republic has this essay by Nicholas Stephanopoulos, which points out that the U.S. has one of the worst methods for drawing legislative district boundaries of any free country in the world. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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Here is a link to the District of Columbia Election Board’s web page. Early returns show Jill Stein (the only name on the ballot) polling more votes than the total number of write-ins, in the Green Party’s presidential primary. Presumably the great bulk of write-ins are for Roseanne Barr.
The web page (at 1:20 a.m. eastern time) was showing these totals: Stein 200 votes; 99 write-ins.
Oklahoma has two-year legislative sessions. Last year, the Oklahoma House overwhelmingly passed HB 1058, to ease the number of signatures for newly-qualifying parties, but for an entire year, the bill has not made any headway in the Senate. However, it appears the Senate Rules Committee will hear it on April 4, Wednesday, late in the day. The Senate Rules Committee Chair, Senator Rob Johnson, apparently supports the bill. Thanks to Richard Prawdzienski for this news.
Maine LD 1879 has not made enough progress in the legislature by certain deadlines, and as a result, cannot pass this year. This is the bill to require unqualified parties that are trying to qualify to report their contributors and expenditures.
In other Maine legislative news, on March 29, Governor Paul LePage signed LD 1774, which conforms the Maine public funding law for candidates for state office to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibits extra public funding for certain candidates who have well-funded opponents.
It is very rare for judges to ever issue orders, directing state legislators to follow certain procedural rules while the legislature is conducting its own business. However, on April 2, a lower state court judge in Michigan said that the State House of Representatives must follow the State Constitution and hold roll call votes, instead of unrecorded votes, when at least 22 Representatives ask for a recorded vote. See this story. The House is appealing to the State Court of Appeals.
On March 2, four Indiana officials in St. Joseph County were indicted for facilitating forged petitions in the 2008 presidential primary. One of the officials was Democratic County Chair in that important county (which includes South Bend). The other three were employees of the county voter registration office. They are charged with helping Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama get on the Democratic presidential primary ballot, by forging names of voters on the petitions.
Indiana requires 4,500 signatures for candidates in statewide major party primaries for ballot access, and 34,195 signatures for statewide independent candidates and the nominees of newly-qualifying parties. Any registered voter can sign any petition. This incident is one more piece of evidence that petition requirements as low as 4,500 can sometimes be formidable obstacles to ballot access. See this story. Thanks to Ryan Nees for the link.