On June 27, the Pennsylvania House passed SB 48 by 111-88. It eliminates the straight-ticket device. If the Governor signs this bill, there will be only seven states remaining with a straight-ticket device.
UPDATE: see this detailed story about the debate in the legislature over this bill.
The number of registered voters in Oklahoma, as of June 27, is: Republican 987,570; Democratic 736,793; Libertarian 10,075; independent and other 318,730.
The percentages are: Republican 48.10%; Democratic 35.89%; Libertarian .49%; independent and other 15.52%.
The percentages just before the November 2018 election were: Republican 47.33%; Democratic 36.83%; Libertarian .40%; independent and other 15.44%.
On June 25, the Pennsylvania Senate passed SB 421 by 30-20. It eliminates the straight-ticket device. The sponsor is a Democrat, Senator Lisa Boscola.
Also, on June 26, the House Appropriations Committee amended SB 48, the bill to replace the state’s vote-counting machines with machines that leave an audit trail. The amendment eliminates the straight-ticket device. SB 48 then passed the House Appropriations Committee on June 27.
On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering does not violate the Constitution, and dismissed the cases from North Carolina and Maryland. The vote was 5-4. Here is the opinion in the two combined cases, Rucho v Common Cause, 18-422; and Lamone v Benisek, 18-726.
On June 26, the California Assembly Appropriations Committee passed SB 27 by a vote of 11-4. This is the bill to keep presidential candidates off the presidential primary ballot if they don’t reveal their income tax returns for the last five years. The bill does not affect write-in candidates in presidential primaries. If it is signed into law and not invalidated by courts, probably President Trump will file as a write-in candidate in the California Republican presidential primary in 2020. That would probably cause millions of voters to cast a write-in vote, which in turn would make election administration quite difficult. It costs more work and money to count ballots with write-ins, than it does to count ordinary ballots.
