The Ventura County Reporter has this interview with Steve Frank, one of the candidates for state chair of the California Republican Party. Frank strongly criticizes the top-two system in this interview. The California Republican Party state convention will be in Sacramento February 22-24.
On January 17, the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee passed HB 2008. It changes the election system for Justice of the Supreme Court. Currently the state holds non-partisan elections for that office in November of even years. The bill would move these elections to the May primary, and if no one received at least 40%, there would be a runoff in November.
In 2018, there were two vacancies on the court. At each election, ten candidates filed, and the winners were seated even though neither had received as much as 40%. Here is a copy of the bill.
Bills have recently been introduced in Oregon, Texas, and Washington, to move the presidential primaries to earlier months. The Oregon bills, HB 2107 and HB 2279, move the entire primary from May to March.
The Texas bill, HB 725, moves the entire primary from March to January.
The Washington bills, SB 5273, SB 5229, and HB 1262, move the presidential primary (but not the primary for other office) from May to March. Thanks to FrontloadingHQ for this news.
Nebraska Senator Justin Wayne (D-Omaha) has introduced LD 98. It lowers the number of signatures for a non-presidential independent candidate for statewide office from 10% of the number of registered voters, to 4,000 signatures.
The state agreed last year not to enforce the 10% petition requirement, so this bill, if passed, merely brings the election code into conformity with actual policy.
Katrina vanden Heuvel has this article in The Nation, defending New York’s fusion law. The article says that few legislators want to repeal fusion, but it also says if Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to ban fusion in New York, he can probably prevail, because Democrats have a majority in both houses of the legislature now and they generally accede to his wishes.
