On March 15, filing closed for candidates in the U.S. House election, North Carolina 9th district. Here is the list. There are ten Republicans, one Democrat, one Libertarian, and one Green. The only party that will hold a primary is the Republican Party; the unopposed candidates of the other parties are deemed nominated.
This election is necessary because the original election last November was tainted by illegal handling of absentee ballots.
The California Senate Elections Committee will hear SB 505 on Tuesday morning, April 2. This is the bill that sets out detailed rules on how candidates get on presidential primary ballots. Existing law does not require them to file, and says they will be put on the ballot automatically if they are generally recognized as candidates for a party nomination. The bill says they must file, and they must meet any two of five tests.
On March 8, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker refused to let the National Republican Senate Committee, and the Republican Governors Association, subpoena various supporters of the lawsuit Jacobson v Ertel, n.d., 4:18cv-262. This is the lawsuit in which the Democratic Party challenges the Florida law that gives the top line on the ballot to the party that won the last gubernatorial election. Republicans have enjoyed the top line on the ballot for all their nominees for over twenty years in Florida, and will again in 2020 if this lawsuit does not succeed.
The National Republican Senate Committee and the Republican Governors Association intervened in the case last year, but they did not exercise their right to depose anyone on the Democratic side until after the deadline for requesting discovery. But Judge Walker refused to bend the deadline. It is somewhat odd that the national Republican bodies wanted to depose anyone, because the state of Florida had not asked for depositions. It is not known what the purpose of the depositions would have been. Perhaps that the Republicans wanted to show that the Democrats are hypocritical on the ballot order issue.
The pretrial conference in this case will be May 7, 2019, and then a trial will be held, and dueling experts on each side will talk about whether having the top line on the ballot influences voter behavior. If it does, then the state is obliged to have a neutral procedure to give each candidate a chance for the top line.
On March 14, the Delaware House passed SB 22 by 24-17. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. It is now through the legislature, and Governor John Carney has already said he will sign it.
Some critics of the plan say the existing system is designed to help small states. This is not factually or historically true. But, aside from that, the plan has now passed the legislature of 6 jurisdictions that have only three or four electoral votes, out of 13 jurisdictions that have three or four electoral votes. It has passed in Delaware, D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont; it has not passed in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
The Utah legislature adjourned for the year in the middle of the night, without passing the bill to end straight-ticket voting. Although it had passed the House, the Senate did not vote on it.
