Last year California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed non-charter cities and counties to use Ranked Choice Voting for their own elections. Michael Feinstein has this op-ed at Fox & Hounds Daily, saying Newsom’s veto was a mistake.
According to this story, Lincoln Chafee will formally announce his candidacy for the Libertarian presidential nomination on January 8 at the National Press Club. UPDATE: see this news story about Chafee’s announcement.
On January 7, the Wisconsin government committee on presidential primary nominations announced the names of 14 Democrats and one Republican who will appear automatically on the presidential primary ballots. Anyone not listed must petition to be on a presidential primary ballot. The petition requires 8,000 signatures, with at least 1,000 from each U.S. House district. The period for collecting signatures runs from January 7 to January 28. The primaries are in April. Any registered voter may sign.
The only name on the Republican Party ballot, without the need for a petition, is President Donald Trump. The fourteen Democrats are: Mike Bennet, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson, and Andrew Yang.
The law says the committee must choose “all candidates whose candidacy is generally advocated or recognized in the national news media throughout the
United States.” The committee, in my opinion, did not follow the law when it excluded all Republicans except President Trump. See section 8.12 of the Wisconsin election law.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s web page has this list of presidential primary candidates, and also an explanation that Bill Weld was removed from the Republican ballot, and John Delaney was removed from the Democratic ballot, because of paperwork errors. The Ohio Secretary of State had previously removed Andrew Yang from the Democratic ballot for paperwork errors.
In no other state have so many major party presidential candidates approved by their parties been kept off the ballot.
The Ohio Republican presidential primary ballot will only list President Donald Trump. The Democratic ballot will list eleven candidates: Bennet, Biden, Bloomberg, Booker, Buttigieg, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Patrick, Sanders, Steyer, and Warren.
On January 7, the Seventh Circuit heard oral argument in Gill v Scholz, 19-1125. The three judges are Michael Brennan, Michael Scudder, and Amy J. St. Eve. The issue is the petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House, 5% of the last vote cast. The hearing went well for the plaintiff-candidate, Dr. David Gill. UPDATE: here is a link to the oral argument, which lasts 32 minutes. Thanks to Sam Cahnman for the link. Choose the Gill case, which is at the top.
