On March 19, the California Senate Elections Committee passed SB 27. This is the bill to require presidential candidates in primaries to reveal the last five years of their income tax returns. It does not apply to write-in candidates, and California permits write-ins in presidential primaries. The vote was 3-1.
On March 18, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a racial gerrymandering case involving Virginia legislative districts. Virginia House of Delegates v Bethune-Hill. The plaintiffs had won in the lower court. Here is the New York Times story about the hearing, which seemed to be almost as much about who in state government can decide whether to appeal, than on the merits itself.
The two partisan gerrymander cases in the U.S. Supreme Court are next week.
On March 14, the Georgia legislature passed HB 316, which retains the existing touchscreen vote-counting machines, but which adds printers to each machine, to print out each voter’s choices. The voter is expected to look at his or her printed copy and check that it accurately reflects what the voter did on the touch-screen. Then the voter deposits the paper ballot in a scanner.
In case there is a dispute that the touchscreen machines performed accurately, the paper ballots are then available to check against the touchscreen results.
HB 316 was controversial, because many legislators opposed this idea and wanted to dispense with touchscreen machines, and simply have the voter mark a paper ballot that could then be read electronically. That system is far more common around the nation. The vote in the House was 101-69. In the Senate, it was 35-21.
The bill also changes various procedures for registration purges, and makes other changes. See this story.
“America Goes to the Polls 2018”, a 40-page comprehensive study of turnout in the 2018 election, has been published. It shows that Minnesota had the highest turnout, and Hawaii had the lowest turnout. The U.S. Elections Project and Nonprofit Vote are responsible for this valuable resource. The founder of U.S. Elections Project, Professor Michael McDonald, is the leading authority on U.S. voter turnout.
Dario Hunter, an announced candidate for the 2020 Green Party presidential nomination, has been fired from his job as a rabbi. His employer was not clear about the reason, but it appears to either relate to his criticism of Israel, or to the fact that he is running for President. See this story.
