On December 21, Veronica Degraffenreid, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, told legislative leaders that because redistricting is still not done, the 2022 primary will need to be moved. See this story.
Pennsylvania wouldn’t have this problem if it provided that candidates could get on primary ballots by paying a filing fee.
LabourList has this article which says that the Labour Party is now very supportive of ending “First Past the Post”, which is the common British term for the type of system that the United States, Great Britain, and Canada use…single-member districts, with whichever candidate getting the most votes being elected.
LabourList is considered one of the four biggest political blogs in Great Britain. It has existed since 2009. The story is by Joe Sousek, national coordinator of Labour for a New Democracy.
In the past, the Labour Party has been an opponent of changing the system. The Liberal Democratic Party has been Britain’s chief advocate for a change. Thanks to Fairvote for the link.
The Libertarian Party website now lists 93 party members who won elective office on November 2, 2021. As of December 14, the list only had 79 winners. It takes time for communication. Here is the list.
The Alaska Supreme Court will hear Kohlhaas v State on Tuesday, January 18. This is the challenge to the initiative passed in 2020 that eliminates party nominees yet which allows party labels on ballots. The only political party in the case is the Alaskan Independence Party. The initiative sends the top-four primary vote-getters to the general election ballot; no one else can be on the general election ballot. The initiative also provides for ranked choice voting in the general election, but not the primary election.
Although one of the issues in the case is whether the state constitution permits ranked-choice voting, the bigger issue in the case is freedom of association for political parties. News stories in the mainstream press tend to ignore the freedom of association part of the case. The Alaska Supreme Court in the past has ruled that the state constitution gives even more protection to political parties than the federal courts do.
Law professor Jerry H. Goldfeder, the acknowledged expert on New York election law, has published this article about New York’s continuing habit of disqualifying candidate petitions for trivial reasons. This has been a problem in New York state for almost a century. Goldfeder suggests that New York institute candidate filing fees as a substitute for petitions, or to use campaign finance data as a substitute for a petition.
