Californians for Electoral Reform, which has been working for proportional representation and ranked choice voting in California for decades, is throwing itself into a campaign to expand the size of the California legislature. The current legislature has only 40 State Senate seats, and 80 Assembly seats. CfER will work for a proposal to expand the State Senate to 80 members, and the Assembly to 240 members.
The change requires a state constitutional amendment.
With just a few hours to go until the deadline, thirteen Democrats and five Republicans have filed to be on a West Virginia presidential primary. Here is the link to the Secretary of State’s list. Candidates qualify by paying a filing fee.
One Democratic candidate, David Lee Rice, has not previously qualified to run in any other state’s presidential primary. He lives in West Virginia.
January 24 is the deadline for candidates to file for the Rhode Island presidential primaries. With a few hours to go, twelve Democrats and four Republicans have filed. Here is the list from the Secretary of State’s web page. Candidates are listed in order of filing.
Each candidate who filed now has until February 6 to submit a petition of 1,000 signatures.
As reported earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a case on whether presidential electors are free to vote for any qualified candidate when they cast a vote in December in the electoral college. Here is an interesting news story about Michael Baca, the Colorado Democratic Party elector from 2016 who was “fired” as an elector by the Secretary of State, right at the meeting in December of the Colorado electors. He won his case in the Tenth Circuit, which said that the constitution does not permit states to behave in that manner.
Tara Ross, a prominent supporter of the Electoral College, e-mailed me today that she supports Michael Baca’s lawsuit and hopes that he wins in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Michael Baca was only 24 years old when he was a presidential elector in 2016.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections has posted a registration tally for Dec. 31, 2019. Here are the percentages: Democratic 75.63%; Republican 5.85%; Green .74%; Libertarian .35%; independent and other 17.43%.
The percentages in October 2018 were: Democratic 75.95%; Republican 6.11%; Green .77%; Libertarian .26%; independent and other 16.91%.
