The Kansas Green Party will launch a petition for party status on April 22, 2021. The petition must be completed within six months from the start date, and needs 21,112 valid signatures. No group, other than Americans Elect in 2011, has done the Kansas party petition since 1998.
Pennsylvania elects all its appellate judges, on three different types of court, in partisan races. They are all elected statewide. That includes the State Supreme Court, the Commonwealth Court, and the Superior Court.
Representative Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon) has introduced HB 38, which would convert all those elections into partisan district races. For example, for the State Supreme Court, the state would be divided into seven districts, with each district electing its own State Supreme Court Justice. The bill has 37 co-sponsors, all Republicans. The legislature would draw the boundaries for the judicial districts. Here is the text.
Currently the State Supreme Court has five Democrats and two Republicans. If the bill passes, it would amend the State Constitution, so voters would then need to approve it. It is possible the bill will pass in time to be on the May 2021 primary ballot. Republicans have a majority in both houses of the legislature, and because HB 38 is a proposed constitutional amendment, it does not need a gubernatorial signature.
Pennsylvania appellate court judges are very partisan. Last year a Republican mid-level court voted to keep Howie Hawkins, Green Party nominee, on the ballot. Democrats, who had challenged Hawkins, then appealed to the State Supreme Court, which removed him in a partisan vote.
On Sunday, February 14, the New York State Board of Elections posted the results of the November 3, 2020 election, for U.S. House, 22nd district. Here is a link. Claudia Tenney, the nominee of the Republican and Conservative Parties, received 156,098 votes. Anthony Brindisi, the nominee of the Democratic, Working Families, and Independence Parties, received 155.989 votes. Keith Price, the Libertarian, received 6,780.
Texas Representative Kyle Biedermann (R-Fredericksburg) has introduced HB 1359, which would put the question of secession from the United States on the November 2021 ballot. Here is the text. So far the bill has made no headway, although it has been endorsed by the state chair of the Republican Party.
On November 3, 2020, South Dakota voters passed Measure A, an initiative, which legalized both medical marijuana and marijuana. On February 8, a state trial court ruled that the measure is invalid because it involves two separate subjects, marijuana and medical marijuana.
On February 12, the Attorney General said that he will not appeal the decision. The Attorney General had tried to defend the initiative in the trial court because any state’s Attorney General is supposed to defend state laws, whether they were passed by the legislature or by initiative.
Proponents of the measure will carry the appeal forward themselves. They will ask the State Supreme Court to reverse the trial court. See this story from Reason magazine. The Attorney General’s decision not to appeal is not covered in that story, because the Attorney General made his decision after that story was written. Thanks to Eric Garris for the link.
Laws that require initiatives to pertain to only a single subject are inherently arbitrary. Last year in Alaska, the Alaska Supreme Court said that an initiative to impose campaign finance rules, and also to set up a top-four system, does not violate the single subject rule because all parts of the initiative concern election law.
