Americans Elect’s web page now lets candidates file to compete for the organization’s presidential nomination, and also lets voters participate in an effort to draft a candidate.
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The Pottstown, Pennsylvania newspaper, the Mercury, has this op-ed about the messy consequencees for Pennsylvania state legislative candidates, due to the invalidation of the state’s new legislative district boundaries. The petitioning period for candidates seeking a place on the primary ballot is only three weeks long, and has already started.
The op-ed even suggests that the true motive of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for invalidating the redistricting plan is that the Court is miffed at the legislature for not raising judicial pay. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
On January 31, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges and Elections Committee passed HB 736, to postpone the non-presidential 2012 primary from June 12 to August 7. The bill has an urgency clause. The bill also provides that it won’t take effect if the districts are settled by March 20.
Virginia legislators are worried about the effect on major party candidates if the boundaries of the U.S. House districts are not known soon. So far there is no bill to address the problem that unqualified parties and independent candidates can’t circulate presidential petitions until the U.S. House districts are known. This is because presidential petitions for the general election must carry the names of an elector living in each U.S. House district. Minor parties and independent presidential candidates can’t choose their presidential elector candidates until the boundaries of the districts are known.
The Columbia Missourian has this story about the Libertarian presidential primary in Missouri, which is being held on February 7. Anyone could have got on that ballot by paying a filing fee of $1,000, but the only person who did so is James Ogle of California, so the article is about him. The article doesn’t explore the question of who else is seeking the party’s nomination at its national convention in May in Las Vegas, or why no one else filed for the primary.
The Columbia Missourian is published daily, both on paper and electronically. It was founded in 1908 as the nation’s first newspaper published by a School of Journalism, and also in 1992 became one of the first periodicals to put content on the web.
The link works, but it takes about 30 seconds to load after one clicks on it.
On February 1, the Nebraska Senate Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard LB 757. All of the testimony was favorable, and it may receive a committee vote in a few days. The bill says that when a party passes the 5% vote test, it then remains on the ballot for four years, not just two years.
A very similar bill in Utah, HB 233, has a hearing on Thursday, February 2, in the House Government Operations Committee.
On January 31, the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee passed SB 62. It provides that voter registration forms should ask for a political party selection. The bill also says that parties would then be free to decide whether to let all voters vote in its primaries, or just members of the party, or just members of the party and independents, or just voters who didn’t vote in the primary of any other party. Under existing law, the voter registration form doesn’t ask the voter to choose a party, and any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.
The bill would not permit voters to register into an unqualified party. However, the bill is vague as to whether the voter would write in the name of a party on a blank space, or whether the form would have checkboxes for the qualified parties.
The vote in Committee was 8-7.