On June 13, the New Hampshire legislature passed HB 706. It sets up an independent redistricting commission, for drawing boundaries for U.S. House and state legislative districts. Thanks to Darryl Perry for this news.
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On the afternoon of June 13, the Democratic National Committee officially announced the names of the twenty Democratic presidential candidates who qualified for the first party-sponsored debate. See this story.
The debates occur over two evenings, June 26 and 27. No determination has been made yet on which candidates will debate on which evening. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
On June 13, officials for the state of Alabama asked for a second extension of time in which to file their response in Hall v Merrill, 18-1362, now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The original deadline for the state had been May 30, but the state had already obtained an extension until July 1. Now the state hopes to extend that to July 31.
The issue originally was whether it is unconstitutional to require an independent candidate for U.S. House to obtain signatures equal to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, in a special election, when there isn’t as much time as in a regular election. The U.S. District Court struck down the law as applied to special elections, but the U.S. District Court Judge issued that opinion after the election was over. The state appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. The Eleventh Circuit ruled 2-1 that ballot access cases involving special elections are moot if they are decided after the election is over. Therefore, the Eleven Circuit erased the U.S. District Court decision.
In the U.S. Supreme Court, the issue is whether constitutional ballot access cases are moot, after the election, if the election is a special election. Almost every other Circuit has weighed in on mootness in ballot access constitutional cases, and no other circuit agrees with the Eleventh Circuit.
We won’t know whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take this case until early October 2019.
On June 12, the New York City Charter Revision Commission put a ballot measure on the November 2019 ballot. It asks if voters want to use ranked choice voting in primaries for city office. Almost all city offices in New York city are partisan. See this story. If the ideas passes, it would also apply to special elections.
On June 5, the New York State Senate passed S5462. No one voted against it. It lets candidates who have the nomination of a minor party remove themselves from the November ballot, if they had sought the nomination of a major party but lost the major party primary. Under current law, if a smaller qualified party nominates someone who is also seeking a major party nomination but fails to get it, that candidate is stuck on the November ballot against their wish (unless they do some very arcane things, such as get the minor party’s nomination for a judicial post).