Every two years, the Federal Election Commission publishes a book of election returns for federal office. The 2018 election returns book, Federal Elections 2018, is now available on-line. It will be in print in a month or two. Thanks to Thomas Jones, and also the FEC itself, for the link.
Ballot Access News
October 1, 2019 – Volume 35, Number 5
| This issue was printed on yellow paper. |
Table of Contents
The New York State Commission that is charged with writing a proposed law for public funding of campaigns is holding public hearings. On October 30 it met in Buffalo. Here is an interesting newspaper story about the hearing. The headline is misleading. If one reads the article, one finds that the public witnesses were almost entirely against banning fusion.
The quote by Jeremy Zellner, a Democratic Party official who wants to ban fusion, is completely out-of-state. He says half of all election litigation in the United States is in New York. That was true back in the 1980’s, but since then New York state has eased most of the hyper-technical petition rules that caused that litigation. Thanks to Steve Kamp for the link.
A U.S. District Court will hear arguments in Montana Green Party v Stapleton, 6:18cv-87, on Thursday, December 11, in Great Falls. This is the case that challenges the unequal distribution requirement for the party petition, and also the March petition deadline. The case arose in 2018, when the Green Party had enough valid signatures statewide on its party petition, but in a few districts did not meet the distribution requirement.
The distribution requirement requires a certain number of signatures in each of 34 of the 100 State House districts. But, oddly, in some districts the number of signatures is as low as 55, while in others it is as high as 150. The Green Party argues that the law, by requiring unequal number of signatures in various districts (even though the districts are of approximate equal population), violates one-person, one-vote.
Here is the last brief, filed by the Green Party on October 25. UPDATE: the original post said the hearing would be December 5, but it has been moved to December 11.
On October 30, presidential primary candidates started filing for the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. See this story.
Three presidential candidates applied in person on October 30. For the Democratic primary, they were Peter Buttigieg and Mark Stewart Greenstein. For the Republican primary, it was Rocky De La Fuente.
