Ryan Cooper writes in The Week about the electoral college. He shows clearly and convincingly that the electoral college does not help small states. Instead, it helps swing states.
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Texas Representative Drew Springer (R-Muenster) has amended his HB 2504. Originally the bill only said that nominees of parties that nominate by convention must pay filing fees. On May 9, Springer amended his bill to say that a party remains on the ballot if it polled as much as 2% of the vote for any statewide office in any of the last five elections.
If this amended bill became law this year, the Green Party would be restored to the ballot, because it polled over 2% for a statewide race in 2010. Thanks to Wes Benedict for this news.
The Austin Statesman has this story about the Texas House action, defeating the bill that would have raised the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot from 5% to 10%.
On May 9, U.S. District Court Judge Charles B. Kornmann issued an opinion in SD Voice v Noem, 1:19cv-1003. It strikes down the South Dakota that forbids out of-state individuals from contributing to or against a statewide initiative.
Alex Kozinski, former chief judge of the Ninth Circuit, and now in private practice, has become an attorney for the plaintiffs/appellants, in Citizens for Fair Representation v Newsom, 18-17458, now pending in the Ninth Circuit.
This is the lawsuit that argues that California legislative districts have such huge populations (1,000,000 for each State Senator; 500,000 for each Assemblymember) that California is violating the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that each state have a republican form of government. The people who filed the case include the Libertarian Party of California, the American Independent Party of California, and the city government of Fort Jones, California. They argue that ordinary people have no meaningful ability to communicate with their state legislators.