On June 15, the District of Columbia held a special election to fill a vacancy in the Advisory Neighborhood Commission inside Ward 7. These D.C. offices have a very small constituency. The typical district only has 2,000 voters. This particular district includes the prison, which has 1,400 inhabitants. All five candidates in the special election were incarcerated. Joel Caston won, with 33% of the vote. See this story. He holds meetings with constituents on zoom, and is likely to be paroled at the end of 2021. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.

Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia are the only jurisdictions in the U.S. which allowed incarcerated felons to vote. D.C. has only done so since July 2020.

Advisory Neighborhood Commission elections are non-partisan.

On August 9, the Texas Senate passed SB 13 by a vote of 28-1. The bill provides for a later 2022 primary. The bill does not itself settle when the primary will be, but sets up conditions, that are dependent on when redistricting is finished.

The House currently does not have a quorum. Thanks to Jim Riley for the news about SB 13.

On August 10, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he will resign soon. It is not clear if his resignation will encourage the New York legislature to repeal any part of his 2020 legislation to make ballot access far more difficult. He forced those changes on the legislature by putting them in the budget bill, which the legislature had to pass. They increased the statewide petition for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from 15,000 signatures to 45,000. They also altered the definition of a qualified party from a group that had polled 50,000 votes for Governor, to a group that had polled 2% of the vote for the top of the ticket in every even-numbered election. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the news about the resignation.