On July 14, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio began the trial in the case in which the U.S. Justice Department says that the last Texas redistricting plan violates the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. See this story.
Jeremy Alford, who writes the blog Louisiana Politics, here makes the case that Congressman Vance McAllister ought to leave the Republican Party and become an independent, and run for re-election that way. The reason is that, according to Alford, the Republican Party has open disdain for McAllister. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the link.
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This Boston Globe article says that filing has now closed for candidates running in Massachusetts primaries this year, and in six of the state’s nine U.S. House districts, no Republican filed.
Although the article is fairly lengthy, and tries to explain why this happened, the article never mentions the real cause, which is that Massachusetts ballot access for primaries is the most restrictive in the nation. Massachusetts requires 2,000 signatures for a candidate to get on a primary ballot for U.S. House, more than any other state (for primaries).
This year, all three statewide minor party petitions were challenged in Illinois. The “record check” to examine each challenged signature starts on Monday, July 14, for the Libertarian petition and the Constitution petition. The process involves a representative of the challenger, and a representative of the petitioning group, sitting down together with an employee of the State Board of Elections, over a computer. The trio focuses on one signature at a time. For a statewide minor party petition, which can involve looking at 20,000 to 30,000 signatures, the process generally takes at least a week. Petitioning groups are told to have twelve workers on the scene.
This year, the process starts in the Springfield office of the Board for the Libertarians; and the Chicago office for the Constitution Party. Because the Board only has those two offices, the Green Party process can’t start this week, but will only commence when one of the others is finished.
This article in the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Maryland, says that 2004 Constitution Party presidential nominee Michael Peroutka recently donated a 30 foot long Allosaurus skeleton to the Creation Museum. The skeleton is valued anywhere from $200,000 to $1,000,000. The article explains how Peroutka came to own the skeleton.
Peroutka polled 143,630 votes for President in 2004. That was the party’s third best presidential vote total; the only ones that were higher were 1996 and 2008.