On February 9, Chris Powell was re-elected to the Bethany, Oklahoma city council. He received 76.3% of the vote against his only opponent. He was the Libertarian Party gubernatorial nominee in 2018.
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On February 9, the New York Assembly passed A4686. It lowers the number of signatures for independent candidate petitions, for district office, for 2021 only. The bill cuts the requirements in half. The bill does not affect the statewide petition requirement of 45,000, although there are no scheduled statewide offices up in 2021 anyway. The chief impact of the bill is for Supreme Court elections (which are district elections in New York state), and local office.
The vote was 144-4. The four “no” votes were cast by three Republicans (Christopher Friend, Karl Brabenec, and David DiPietro) and one Democrat (Charles Barron). Thanks to Joe Burns for this news.
On February 9, the Louisiana Secretary of State’s office released the number of registrants in all parties:
Democratic 1,206,740
Republican 992,394
Independent Party 108,990
Libertarian 15,210
Green 2,311
Reform 929
Conservative 795
Constitution 170
independent and miscellaneous 771,996
Percentages are: Democratic 38.93%; Republican 32.02%; Independent Party 3.52%; Libertarian .49%; Green .07%; Reform .03%; Conservative .03%; Constitution .01%; independent and miscellaneous 24.91%.
Percentages in February 2020 were: Democratic 42.28%; Republican 31.49%; Independent Party 2.97%; Libertarian .47%; Green .08%; Reform .04%; Conservative .03%; Constitution .01%; independent and miscellaneous 22.64%.
In October 2020, the Secretary of State’s office had released data for minor parties that was inaccurate. I printed that minor party data in the November 1, 2020 Ballot Access print edition, even though at the time I suspected it wasn’t correct. For example, the October 2020 figure had only showed 15,048 for the Independent Party, even though the state had said earlier in the year that the Independent Party was entitled to its own presidential primary because it had over 40,000 registrants. Also the October 2020 figure had showed 23,406 Libertarians, which was suspiciously high.
The March 1 2021 print issue of BAN will have a voter registration chart.
On February 8, the Ohio Secretary of State asked the U.S. Supreme Court for more time to respond to the cert petition in Thompson v DeWine, 20-1072, the case over petitioning for initiatives during the health crisis.
The Rhode Island State Board of Elections hopes to have the write-in votes for declared write-in presidential candidates in two weeks. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.