Mississippi Initiative to Make Some Local Offices Non-Partisan

Posted on by January 19, 2020
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Former Mississippi Representative Joseph Warren (D-Mt. Olive) is sponsoring an initiative to make county, justice court judges, and district attorney elections non-partisan. If enacted, the initiative would provide for elections in the general election for those offices, and no party labels would be on the ballot for those offices. If any candidate received a majority, he or she would be elected. Otherwise there would be a run-off after the general election.

Initiative 70, like all Mississippi statewide initiatives at this time, needs 86,183 valid signatures by October 2020.

Interesting Virginia Election Law Bills

Posted on by January 19, 2020
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The 2020 session of the Virginia legislature has many election law bills. Below are some of them, but this is far from an exhaustive list.

SB 174 would have provided that each U.S. House district elect its own presidential elector. This is the system now used by Maine and Nebraska. That bill was defeated in the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on January 14, by a vote of 12-3. The other bills mentioned in this post, below, have not yet had any action.

HB 177 is the National Popular Vote Plan bill.

HB 214 would legalize out-of-state petition circulators, to conform the law to the 2013 decision Libertarian Party of Virginia v Judd.

Two bills would provide for partisan labels for local office. Currently many local elections are partisan, but party labels aren’t on the ballot. These bills are HB 216 and SB 131.

HB 218 would delete the authority of a qualified party to nominate any candidates for statewide state office by convention, and require primaries for those offices instead. The three offices affected by this bill are Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General.

HB 1103 would let any city or county use ranked choice voting for its own officers.

SB 126 would delete the law that lets incumbents dictate to their party whether the party should use a primary or a convention in their particular election. That law was declared unconstitutional in 2019 in Sixth Congressional District Republican Party v Alcorn.

New Hampshire Bill to Withhold Presidential Election Results Until After the Electoral College Meets

Posted on by January 19, 2020
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Seven New Hampshire Republican representatives have introduced HB 1531. It makes it illegal for any election official, or any contractor with any election administration office, to release the New Hampshire popular vote totals for president, until after the electoral college has met. Instead the state would only release the percentage of the vote received by each presidential candidate, down to one-tenth of 1%.

The purpose of this bill is to make it impossible for the National Popular Vote compact to operate, should it ever take effect. The bill only takes effect if the National Popular Vote compact is in effect.

The authors of this bill may not realize that a federal law requires states to report the presidential popular vote to the Archivist of the United States as soon as the state knows the results. Title 3, chapter 1 of the U.S. Code (3 USC 6) says, “It shall be the duty of the executive of each State, as soon as practicable after the conclusion of the appointment of the electors in such State by the final ascertainment…to communicate by registered mail under the seal of the State to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of such ascertainment of the electors appointed, setting forth the names of such electors and the canvass or other ascertainment under the laws of such State of the number of votes given or cast for each person for whose appointment any and all votes have been given or cast.”

The sponsors are Representatives Andrew Prout, Jess Edwards, Michael Costable, Kevin Verville, Alice Lekas, Tony Lekas, and Peter Torosian.

Brennan Center Issues a Report, Rebutting the Claim That Public Funding Law Means Ballot Access Must be Restricted

Posted on by January 18, 2020
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The Brennan Center for Justice has released this 8-page analysis, rebutting the claims of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that if New York installs public funding for candidates for state office, it needs to toughen ballot access to save money.

Also, the Campaign Finance Institute, which supports public funding, also studied the same issue. Its 39-page report comes to the same conclusion, that there is no need to make ballot access more difficult. The Campaign Finance Institute argues that the ballot access provisions can be severed from the public funding provisions, even though the new law plainly says that if any part of the new law is void, the entire law is void. Thanks to Scott Muller for both links.

Sixth Circuit Sets Oral Argument Date for Michigan Republican Lawsuit Against Nonpartisan Redistricting Commission

Posted on by January 18, 2020
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The Sixth Circuit will hear Daunt v Benson, 19-2377, on Tuesday, March 17. This is the case in which the Republican Party is trying to invalidate the Michigan Redistricting Commission passed by the voters in 2018. The U.S. District Court had ruled against the Republican Party and had upheld the new commission. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.