U.S. District Court Judge Phillip Brimmer held a hearing in Goodall v Williams on Monday, April 30. Here is a news story about the hearing, which concerns Colorado’s ban on out-of-state circulators for candidate petitions.
UPDATE: also see this story, which reveals that the ban on out-of-state circulators in Colorado has existed since 1980.
The Federal Election Commission’s print book of 2016 election returns has been released. It has 197 pages and is called “Federal Elections 2016”. It is free to anyone who asks. It includes election returns for all federal office, primary and general. It is the most accurate reference book for election returns for 2016. The book can be ordered by calling the FEC at 800-424-9530 and choosing option #2.
Here is the Maine sample ballot for the June 12, 2018 primary for Governor. That particular ballot is the Democratic ballot.
California State Senator Ben Allen introduced SCA 21 in March, to somewhat change the California top-two system. It is a proposed Constitutional amendment to say that even a person who places second in June cannot advance to the November general election unless that person polls at least 40 write-ins in June.
The bill had been scheduled to be heard in the Senate Elections Committee on May 1, but Senator Allen has removed the bill from the agenda for that hearing date.
On April 18, the Nebraska Senate Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee killed SB 969. The bill would have reduced the number of signatures for a non-presidential independent candidate from 10% of the number of registered voters, to exactly 4,000. The bill would have undid the 2016 law that hugely increased the independent petition requirement.
Some supporters of the top-two primary say that Nebraska’s legislature works better than the legislatures of most states. Nebraska is the only state in which elections for the legislature are non-partisan. But the behavior of the Nebraska legislature, making it virtually impossible for an independent candidate to get on the ballot in Nebraska for a partisan office, shows that just because the Nebraska legislature is technically non-partisan, it is no friend of independent candidates.
It is somewhat likely that a lawsuit will be filed soon to overturn the 10% petition requirement. One was already filed, but then the plaintiff, State Senator Bob Krist, decided not to be an independent candidate this year, so he withdrew the lawsuit. The new lawsuit will be different than the Krist lawsuit.
