On March 18, the Louisiana Senate & Governmental Affairs Committee defeated SB 60. The bill would let independent candidates appear on the ballot as “independent”, instead of “no party.” The vote was tied at 4-4, but bills can’t pass unless they obtain more “yes” votes than “no” votes. Current law puts independent candidates on the ballot as “no party”, except that independent presidential candidates may have “independent.” See this story.
SB 60 would also have eliminated the existing provision that there can’t be an “Independent Party”. Sen.Gallot said that he did so to eliminate the conflict that led to Governor Jindal’s veto of a bill containing a similar provision last session.
But this seems more confusing to me, since a candidate might be registered with the Independent Party, or have no party affiliation – or depend on subtle difference between “Independent” and “independent”.
The video of the committee hearing appears to be in a purgatory between live and Memorex.
The house bill which you blogged about last week, HB 193, is much simpler, and changes the designation of unaffiliated voters from “No Party” to “Independent” and retains the prohibition of an “Independent Party.” It is on the agenda of a house committee for tomorrow (March 19).
Incidentally, Edwin Edwards, godfather of the Open Primary, is running for Congress. He said he would really rather run for governor, but there is a prohibition on felons running for 15 years after their sentence is completed. He said he didn’t vote for Obama because there were no voting machines in his locale.
Thanks for telling me about the hearing tomorrow in the House committee.
HB 193 was reported by the House and Government Affairs without objection. I caught the tail end of hearing on the bill. Representative Richard (pronounce this as if you knew he was from Lafourche Parish) presented the bill along with someone from the SOS office (it might be the same person quoted in the article about the senate bill).
He noted that there are already 47,970 registered “Independent”s, and another 12,000 or so with alternative spelling.
He also said he couldn’t be ready by the August 1 effective date in the bill (this was also a concern about the senate bill).
Immediately, a committee member offered an amendment to change the effective date until next January 1.