On January 3, Congressmember Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) introduced a constitutional amendment to provide for the direct popular election of the president. The text is not yet on the web page for Congress.
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Four New Mexico Democratic legislators have introduced HB 55, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. In 2017, the same bill passed the State Senate but not the House. The four sponsors are Representatives Gail Chasey and Daymon Ely, and Senators Mimi Stewart and Carlos Cisneros.
Congressmember John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) and many others have introduced HR 1, a federal election law bill. However, the text of the bill is not yet posted to the web page for Congress. When it is, this post will be revised to include a link. Here is a summary of the bill prepared by its sponsors.
On December 28, the Arizona voters who want a special election to fill Senator John McCain’s Senate seat filed this brief. The case is Tedards v Ducey, 2:18cv-4241. McCain died in August 2018 and the state proposes not to hold an election to fill the remainder of that seat until November 2020.
The case also argues that the state law, telling the Governor he or she must appoint a member of the same party who had held the seat earlier, violates the Elections Clause.
The brief distinguishes Valenti v Rockefeller, the 1968 case involving the seat of Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. In that case, Kennedy was killed in June 1968 and the New York voters who sued for a special election insisted that the special election be held in November 1968. They lost. The new Arizona case says the Arizona case is different than the New York case, because the Arizona plaintiffs never demanded that the McCain seat be filled in November 2018, just that it be held sometime in 2019.
On January 2, the Ninth Circuit agreed to rehear en banc Democratic National Committee v Reagan, 18-15845. This is a challenge to two Arizona election laws: (1) the law that won’t let provisional ballots be cast outside one’s home precinct; (2) the law that makes it illegal for anyone except certain persons to return a voted postal ballot. The original Ninth Circuit panel had upheld both laws on September 12, 2018, by a 2-1 vote. Also the U.S. District Court had upheld them.
The state defends the law on provisional ballots by pointing out that only 3,970 such ballots were rejected in 2016 (only one-sixth of 1% of the total vote cast), but then it simultaneously defends the law by saying it is necessary so that the precincts don’t run out of blank ballots. Those two arguments are contradictory. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.