On July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta. The vote was 6-3. The decision strikes down a California law that requires charities that solicit tax-deductible donations in California to reveal their major donors.
The decision is difficult to reconcile with Doe v Reed, an earlier U.S. Supreme Court opinion that ruled against privacy for petition signers, and the three dissenting justices emphasize that point.
On July 1, Open Primaries, an organization dedicated to eliminating the ability of political parties to have nominees, sent out a mass e-mail that publicizes its research on voter registration. The organization’s Report is called “The Next Great Migration, the Rise of Independent Voters.” The e-mail says, “The Open Primaries Education Fund released a fascinating and important report recently on the rise of independent voters in America.”
Their report was first released on November 29, 2020, and has not been updated. The Report is written to suggest that independent voters are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. electorate. All of the registration data in the report is from May 2020 or earlier months. But between March 2020 and March 2021, the percentage of voters registered as independents has declined slightly, from 29.09% to 28.39%. See the registration data in the printed issues of Ballot Access News for Marcy 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. Links to past print issues can be seen on this website. Links to past print issues are on the upper right side.
The Report does not even acknowledge that 2.6% of voters are registered in parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties. The only mention of minor party data is in the Appendix. The Report says that Nebraska, California and Washington have nonpartisan primaries. Regarding Nebraska, this is highly misleading. Nebraska has nonpartisan elections for state legislature, but it has closed or semi-closed primaries for congress, partisan county office, and state executive office. The Report purports to list all the states with partisan registration, but it omits Arkansas. The Report appendix says its South Dakota data is from December 2020, but it actually shows the May 2020 South Dakota data. The Report’s map of the 50 states shows Washington as a state with partisan registration, but Washington does not have partisan registration.
Ballot Access News
June 2021 – Volume 37, Number 1
| This issue was printed on grey paper. |
Table of Contents
On July 1, U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor enjoined the new Florida law that bars anyone from contributing more than $3,000 to a committee that is trying to get a statewide initiative on the ballot. ACLU v Lee, n.d., 4:21cv-190. The order also says that the proper defendant in this case is the Florida Elections Commission, not the Secretary of State, but that didn’t affect the outcome because the plaintiffs had sued both officials.
Here is the 17-page order.
On June 29, Elizabeth Martinez and Maggie Phair, both former candidates in the Peace & Freedom Party, died. Martinez was 95 and Phair was 92.
See this New York Times obituary for Elizabeth Martinez, and this page from the Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights. Thanks to several readers for the links. UPDATE: see this obituary for Maggie Phair.
