On July 27, the First Circuit heard We the People PAC v Bellows, 21-1149. The issue is Maine’s ban on out-of-state circulators for initiatives, and also the parallel requirement that the circulators must be registered in the town or city they are working in. The judges are William Kayatta and David Barron (Obama appointees) and U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris (a Clinton appointee). When there is news about how the hearing went, it will be posted here.
New Hampshire HB 98 was sent to Governor Chris Sununu on Monday, July 26. He has five days to act on the bill. It moves the non-presidential primary from September to August. Unfortunately it also moves the petition deadline for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from August to July. And it moves the deadline for such candidates to file a declaration of candidacy from June to May. That even includes presidential candidates, so if the bill is signed, minor parties will be forced to choose their presidential nominees by May of election years if they want to be on the New Hampshire ballot.
The Nation has this article about the elimination of most Working Families Party nominees in the New York city election of November 2, 2021. The WFP nominees are almost entirely also individuals who are Democratic nominees. Their inability to appear on the WFP line relates to a technicality about electronic candidacy forms.
A group of Colorado Republican activists are working to persuade the state party to end primaries for the party for 2022, and instead nominate by caucus and convention. In order for the proposal to be adopted by the party, three-fourths of the members of the state governing body must agree.
Major parties in Colorado have the right to make this change, as a result of the initiative that passed a few years ago that said if a party uses primaries, it must let independent voters participate in those primaries.
A 3-judge U.S. District Court will hold a trial September 27-29 in McConachie v Illinois State Board of Elections, n.d., 1:21cv-3091. This is the lawsuit over the validity of the Illinois legislative redistricting for the new decade. The Illinois legislature is the only legislature in the nation that has already drawn new legislative districts. Because the 2020 census data isn’t available yet, the legislature used other data from the American Community Survey, which is conducted by the Census Bureau but a far cry from the regular census. Two sets of plaintiffs are asking the court to rule the legislative districts invalid, and to force the legislature to do the job again once the census data is available in August.
An irony is that Illinois legislative district boundaries now may be delayed more than if the legislature had simply waited until the census data is available.
The Illinois legislature has not done any U.S. House redistricting yet.
