Jeff Jacoby has this column in the Boston Globe of December 27, advocating that Congress vote to enlarge the membership of the U.S. House of Representatives. See here. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
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The Colorado Republican State Central Committee is composed of party officers from each of the 64 counties, and Republican elected officials, and bonus members. The bonus members for each county are based on how many people voted for the Republican nominee (for the office at the top of the ballot) in the last election. The provision for bonus members says that for each 10,000 votes for the Republican nominee, that county gets another 2 bonus members.
The provision for bonus members is the only mechanism to make membership on the Central Committee roughly proportionate to population. Because Colorado, like almost all states, has many relatively low-population counties and a much smaller number of high-population counties, a committee based entirely on county party officers and elected officials would give a huge majority on the Committee to the small-population counties.
This year, the Republican nominee for Governor only polled 199,034 votes, because most Republican voters voted for the Constitution Party nominee, Tom Tancredo. A normal Republican gubernatorial vote in Colorado is approximately 800,000 votes. As a result of the low vote for the Republican gubernatorial nominee, the Republican State Central Committee, which normally has approximately 400 members, has only 296 members, and they are disproportionately from low-population counties. See this analysis at Craig Steiner’s blog. In retrospect, the party ought to have made the formula dependent on the number of Republican registrants, instead of the gubernatorial vote.
The December 24 New York Times has this story, saying Governor Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii has asked the state Attorney General and the chief of the state Health Department to help him find a legal way for the state to release President Obama’s original birth certificate. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The Peach Pundit has this commentary about Georgia ballot access, along with comment on Instant Runoff Voting and on electronic vote-counting machines that create an audit trail. The Peach Pundit is a blog about Georgia politics. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
At least 137 bills have been introduced in the California legislature, for the 2011-2012 session, according to the legislature’s web page. But there seem to be no bills changing the way candidates for federal or state office are elected. The California Secretary of State, and the California Association of County Election Officials, both seek changes to the law that implements the “top-two” system. The counties are worried that the administrative cost of printing ballots will be significantly higher than in the past, if no changes are made.
There is also the problem that the law is now internally contradictory on whether write-in space should be printed on November ballots, or on run-off ballots in special elections. The code continues to say that such write-in spaces should be printed. The sample ballots for the special election run-off in the First State Senate District do contain write-in space, although that election (set for January 4) is the last being conducted under the rules in effect before Prop. 14 passed. The law also continues to provide procedures for declared write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy in all elections. On the other hand, the implementing language for Prop. 14 says write-in votes in November, or in special run-offs, can’t be counted.
Anyone, in any state, is free to check state legislative pages, looking for election law bills of interest. If you find interesting election law bills, please notify us all, either with a comment to this post, or with an e-mail to richardwinger@yahoo.com. Thank you. Of course in some states, no bills have been introduced yet.
On December 23, a lower state court in Nebraska ruled that the recall petition for Mayor of Omaha has enough valid signatures. Proponents of the recall needed 26,643 valid signatures. They collected 37,596, and elections officials ruled that approximately 29,000 were valid. Opponents of the recall then sued the elections officials, saying the number of valid signatures is actually fewer than the requirement. However, the judge did not find any invalid signatures among those that elections officials had said are valid.
Even though half the signatures were collected by volunteers, the cost of collecting the other half was $300,000. Proponents of the recall say that the cost was extraordinarily high because of Nebraska’s laws against using out-of-state circulators, and laws against paying circulators on a per-signature basis. See this story.