Michael Diederich, a strong contender for District Attorney of Rockland County, has left the Democratic Party and enrolled in the SAM Party, according to this story. The SAM Party became ballot-qualified last year. “SAM” stands for “Serve America Movement” but the ballot says “SAM”. See this story.
A bill is being introduced in the New York legislature on April 8 to enable the state to make President Trump’s state income tax returns public. The state would seek the permission of three chairmen of three congressional committees in order to do this. See this New York Times story.
This bill does injure voting rights. Many states are threatening to pass bills that keep presidential candidates off the ballot if they don’t reveal income tax returns. Those bills injure the voters who want to vote for such candidates. Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.
The Prohibition Party will hold a telephone national convention on April 14 and choose a new presidential and vice-presidential nominee for 2020.
On April 2, Maine Representative Janice Cooper (D-Yarmouth) introduced LD 1477. It extends ranked choice voting to general elections for state office. It begins the process of amending the Maine Constitution. Although Maine now has ranked choice voting for congress, and for state office primaries, the state constitution stands in the way of permitting it for state office general elections.
LD 1477 has a hearing in the Joint Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee on April 10. It needs two-thirds approval in each house.
The Libertarian Party may have presidential primaries in as many as sixteen jurisdictions in 2020, which would be more than any party (other than the Democratic and Republican Parties) has ever had. In a few states in the past, though, state Libertarian Parties have declined to have presidential primaries even though they were entitled to them, so it isn’t possible to know now how many Libertarian presidential primaries there will be.
It appears that there could be Libertarian 2020 presidential primaries in Arizona, California, Delaware (although ballot access for candidates is difficult), D.C., Idaho, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah. There is a possibility of one in New Mexico also, if the state agrees that the party is still entitled to a primary. The New Mexico Secretary of State still lists the Libertarian Party in its voter registration statistics. New Mexico also keeps track of the number of registrants in qualified minor parties, but does not display that data on its web page, so the fact that the Secretary has the Libertarian Party in its chart implies that the party is still considered a party entitled to a primary.
