City and State here interviews Gerard Kassar, the state chair of the New York Conservative Party. Kassar believes that the lawsuit now pending in state court in Niagara County will result in a decision that the Public Funding Commission has no authority to change state election laws. Kassar also noticed that the nine Commissioners didn’t even take an oath of office.
The lawsuit has an oral argument on December 12, Thursday.
On December 6, the U.S. House passed HR 4, the bill to update the pre-clearance part of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the old pre-clearance rules were so out-of-date, they could not be enforced.
If there were at least 15 instances in a single state when a local government had committed a voting rights violation in the last 25 years, then that state would be subject to having its election law changes pre-cleared by the U.S. Justice Department. Or if the state itself had committed a voting rights violation, and there were also nine or more instances when a local government in that same state had also done so, all in the last 25 years, then that state would also be under pre-clearance.
All Democrats in the U.S. House voted for HR 4, but only one Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted for it. The lone independent voted against the bill. Here is a description of the bill.
The old Voting Rights Act was not very helpful against restrictive ballot access laws. Generally when a state that was under pre-clearance made its ballot access laws more severe, the federal Justice Department approved the changes. The Justice Department did stop Mississippi from increasing its statewide independent petition in 1966 from 1,000 signatures to 10,000 signatures. Also when Alabama in 1982 increased the vote test for a party to stay on the ballot from zero votes to 20%, the Justice Department stopped Alabama from enforcing the new law for the 1982 election.
Delegates to the Oklahoma Libertarian Party state convention have voted 17-13 for a closed primary for 2020. In Oklahoma, the election law lets each party decide for itself whether to let independents vote in the primary. Thanks to Chris Powell for this news.
The New York Times has this story about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on December 6 to hear Carney v Adams, the case over whether Delaware state court judges can be confined to registered Republicans and Democrats. It is astounding that the state claims that its policy is “balanced”, when over 20% of all registered voters are barred from consideration. Thanks to Ron Paulinski for the link.
President Donald Trump declined a chance to run in the American Independent Party presidential primary for 2020. The party invited him, and he was made aware of the offer through a discussion with one of his sons. In 2016 the AIP had nominated him in the general election, and in November 2016 his name was on the California ballot with the label, “Republican, American Independent.”
