New Jersey holds primaries on June 7, 2021, for Governor and state legislature. On January 25, the Governor issued an Executive Order, permitting electronic signatures on primary petitions for 2021 primaries. See it here. This is the same policy followed last year. New Jersey requires 1,000 signatures for primary candidates for statewide office. Thanks to Jerrick Adams for the link.
According to this news story, the Virginia Elections Department has settled a lawsuit, and as a result, only 2,000 signatures will be required for statewide offices this year. Normally the requirement is 10,000. Also the distribution requirement is easier in 2021 than it is normally. Only fifty signatures are needed from each U.S. House district, as opposed to the normal 400 from each district. The lawsuit is Goldman v Virginia Dept. of Elections, Richmond city circuit court, CL20006468. Here is the 5-page order.
The court order applies to all statewide candidates this year, primary and general alike. The court order also permits signers to photograph their signature and e-mail it to the group or candidate who is petitioning, and that type of signatures counts. This is a first for Virginia.
Virginia elects three statewide offices this year: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. The State Board of Elections webpage still shows that 10,000 signatures are required this year for primary candidates for statewide office, so it is not up-to-date. Thanks to Jerrick Adams for the link.
Massachusetts, like most states, provides that write-in presidential candidates should file a declaration of write-in candidacy if they want their write-ins tallied. But this year, the Secretary of State, for the first time, has refused to tally up the votes for these candidates. There were only five declared write-in presidential candidates in 2020 in Massachusetts. The Secretary of State says if they want to know how many write-ins they received, they should contact each town election office. However, even if they did that, the publications that compile and print the national election returns would not recognize such vote totals, because they wouldn’t be “official”.
Other states that formerly tallied write-ins for declared write-in presidential candidates, and which no longer do, are North Dakota and Virginia.
The write-in presidential candidate in 2020 who probably got the most votes is Brian Carroll, presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.
Ten Iowa Democratic state representatives have introduced HB 134, which would reinstate the straigiht-ticket device. Iowa repealed its device in 2017. Thanks to Brady Olson for this news.
New York city will hold a special election to fill a vacancy in the city council, 24th district, on February 2. Under the terms of a new charter amendment passed in 2019, ranked choice voting will be used. The law requires RCV in special elections and in primaries, but not regularly-scheduled general elections.
The district is in Queens. In New York city special elections, candidates are not nominated by parties. Each candidate may have a partisan label, but the label can’t mimic the name of a qualified party. The 24th district special election has seven candidates. Voters may rank up to five candidates.
New York city used ranked choice voting for its city council seats between 1937 and 1945. During that period, each of the five boroughs elected its city councilmembers at-large, so the type of ranked choice voting used 1937-1945 was a form of proportional representation.
The ballot labels for candidates in the Feb. 2, 2021 election are: Mo for the People, A Better Queens, Your Voice Matters, Community First, United Citizens, Unity, Queens Strong, and Soma for Queens.
