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.
On February 1, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges & Elections Committee defeated HB 1129 by 5-1. The bill would have imposed a top-two system on Virginia.
Public Policy Polls released a new California poll on February 7, showing that two Democrats will likely be the only choices on the November 2018 ballot for both Governor and U.S. Senator. Voters who don’t wish to vote for a Democrat will be disenfranchised, as there is no write-in space any longer on California general election ballots for partisan office other than president.
