On January 31, the Utah House Government Operations Committee passed HB 68. It gives a political party that is entitled to a primary the power to tell candidates that if they want that party’s nomination, they must choose one method to get on the primary ballot. They can either attempt to get enough support at a party convention, or they can petition onto the primary ballot, but they can’t try both methods.
On January 17, the Arizona House Local & International Affairs Committee defeated HB 2032 by 5-2. It would have forced Tucson to use non-partisan elections for city office. Tucson currently is the only city in Arizona that uses partisan elections.
On February 7, the U.S. District Court Judge assigned to the lawsuit North Carolina Democratic Party v Berger issued an order. She had ruled last week that the state must hold 2018 judicial primaries for the State Supreme Court and State Court of Appeals judicial elections. The new order says that she will not stay her own decision, while the state tries to appeal to the Fourth Circuit.
On January 31, a U.S. District Court issued a 12-page order in Citizens for Fair Representation v Padilla, e.d., 2:17cv-973. This is the lawsuit that says because California’s legislative districts have such huge populations (virtually 1,000,000 for State Senate, and 500,000 for Assembly), California is violating the U.S. Constitution. The order says that the original Complaint is deficient, because the plaintiffs only express general grievances, not grievances that show that they themselves are being harmed. But the order says the plaintiffs are free to file an amended complaint that might possibly solve this problem.
John Cox’s California initiative to vastly expand the number of state legislators has failed to qualify for the ballot. Cox submitted 794,643 signatures and needed 585,407 valid ones. Election officials checked all the signatures and determined that only 559,906 were valid.
