Ben Christopher has this story in Calmatters about voters who cast blank ballots in races with no choices except for two Democrats. Generally, 16% of the voters cast blank ballots in such races.
The California official election returns still haven’t been released. When they are released, there will be better data for this topic.
The Utah State Elections office has ruled that when a party submits a party petition, it is automatically on for the next two elections, not just one election. This means that the Green Party is still ballot-qualified in Utah.
The law is quite clear that when a party meets the vote test, it gets the next two elections. But it had not been clear as to whether a petition also yields the next two elections. The Green Party did not do the party petition in Utah in 2016, but it did it during 2017, for the 2018 election. At the 2018 election, it did not poll enough votes to meet the 2% vote test. But the new ruling allows it to also be on for 2020. It is much easier for parties to meet the vote test in presidential years, because all the statewide state offices are up in presidential years. Thanks to Charles Sherrouse for this news.
On December 1, the Tennessee State Executive Committee passed a resolution in favor of changing voter registration forms, to ask voters to choose a party. This would enable parties that have primaries to close them. See this story.
The party also endorsed raising the number of signatures for independent candidates. Currently all candidates need 25 signatures, except presidential independents need 275. The resolution recommends 1,000 for statewide office; 500 for U.S. House; 200 for State Senate; and 75 for State House. County offices would still need 25.
On November 30, all the full-time judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, heard Libertarian National Committee v Federal Election Commission. This is a challenge to the federal campaign law that won’t let donors leave large bequests to political parties and have that money available to those parties when that donor dies. According to this news story, many of the judges did not seem to believe that the law is unconstitutional.
British Columbia voters have all received postal ballots, asking them if they want proportional representation, and if so, what type. The original deadline for voters to return their ballots was November 30, but that deadline has been extended to December 7. One reason for the extension is that there has been a postal strike.
