This story about Maine’s bill for ranked choice voting in presidential primaries says that if the bill becomes law, it won’t be easy to combine ranked choice voting with the national Democratic Party rules on apportioning votes. The national rules say any presidential candidate who gets at least 15% in a Democratic primary is entitled to a proportionate number of delegates to the national convention. Squaring that with ranked choice voting is a head-scratcher.
On August 30, the Alaska Attorney General ruled that a statewide initiative that is being circulated violates the same-subject rule, and is therefor invalid. The initiative leads off with tougher campaign finance restrictions. But then it also includes a section setting up a “top-four” election system, in which the only candidates in the November election (for congress and partisan state office) would be the four candidates who polled the most votes in the August primary. See this story. Thanks to Scott Kohlhaas for the link.
Most states, including Alaska, require that initiatives must deal with just one subject. The attorney general said the campaign finance changes, and the top-four provision, are separate subjects.
On August 30, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 681, after amending it. The bill now requires that independent voters receive two postal notices telling them which parties allow independent voters to vote in their primaries, instead of three notices. Also the bill now says that if an independent voter receives a mail ballot that doesn’t include any particular party’s primary ballot, the voter may return it and request a ballot for any party that allows independents to vote in its presidential primary.
The California deadline for parties to tell the state whether they want to allow independents to vote in their presidential primary has not yet passed. But in 2016, the Democratic, Libertarian, and American Independent Party allowed independents to vote in their presidential primary. The Republican, Green, and Peace & Freedom Parties did not.
On August 30, the California Senate Appropriations Committee passed AB 1451, the bill to make it more difficult for initiatives to get on the statewide ballot. It requires that at least 10% of the signatures must be collected by unpaid individuals. It also outlaws paying circulators on a per-signature basis.
Tucson elects a mayor and city council on November 5, 2019, in a partisan election. The Green Party candidates were all write-in candidates in the Green Party primary. According to this story, all four of them received enough primary write-in votes to be placed on the November ballot.
The Green Party is not ballot-qualified in Arizona, but it is ballot-qualified inside Tucson, and has been for some years. Because it has ongoing status inside Tucson, as opposed to being a “new” party, it faced a requirement that its write-in candidates poll a certain number of write-in votes, as opposed to getting just one write-in.
