Four New Mexico representatives have introduced HJR 5, a proposed constitutional amendment. It would provide that independent voters could choose any party’s primary ballot. If a party refuses to allow independents to vote in its primary, it would be required to pay the election-administration costs of that primary. The sponsors are two Democrats (Meredith A. Dixon and Joy Garratt) and two Republicans (Kelly K. Fajardo and T. Ryan Lane). Thanks to Rick Lass for this news. Here is the text.
On January 13, William (Bill) Mohr died at the age of 62. He was the Constitution Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2020, and had been state chair of the Michigan party. See this obituary. Thanks to Thom Holmes for this news.
On January 18, the Alaska Supreme Court heard Kohlhaas v State, the lawsuit against the top-four system that passed in November 2020. Here is a short news story about the hearing.
Protect Democracy has issued a scholarly report titled “Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism.” Scholars involved with the report are Arend Lijphart, Jack Santucci, Jennifer Gandhi, Larry Diamond, Lee Drutman, Yascha Mounk, and Cynthia McClintock.
The paper says “This paper does not advocate for any specific suites of reforms”, but does recommend ranked choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, and enlarging the size of the U.S. House. The report points out that the U.S. House has more constituents per member than any other lower-chamber legislative body in the world, except for India.
The report notes that the U.S. is the only nation that forces parties to choose their nominees in government-administered primaries, but it does not suggest that the U.S. switch to the common world standard of letting parties choose their own nominees through their own meetings. The report does suggest the U.S. primaries would be improved if ranked choice voting were used in primaries. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link to the report.
Florida is in the process of redistricting. According to this Politico story, Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t like the maps introduced so far in the Republican-majority legislature, and the story suggests he would veto the legislative proposal if it isn’t changed to make it more Republican-friendly. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
