Pennsylvania currently has no valid U.S. House district boundaries. Last week the legislature prepared a redistricting plan, but on February 13 Governor Tom Wolf said he will not submit the legislature’s plan to the State Supreme Court. The plan is just a plan, not a bill. Presumably this means the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania will prepare its own plan. See this story.
The filing deadline for candidates running in a primary is March 20, 2018.
The Illinois Green Party’s ballot access case Tripp v Scholz now has a U.S. Supreme Court docket number, 17-1129. If the state wishes to respond to the cert petition, it must due so by March 14. The case concerns ballot access for the legislative candidates of unqualified parties. In 2016, Illinois was one of three states that had no third party candidates for the legislature on the ballot (not counting a handful of states that didn’t have legislative elections in 2016). The other two were North Dakota and South Dakota.
The New York Times print edition for February 13 carries David Brooks’ column, which is titled “The End of the Two-Party System.” The column itself does not directly address that subject, but is instead a commentary about the state of the Republican Party and what it now appears to stand for. Thanks to Taegan Goddard for the link.
The Opelika-Auburn News, a daily newspaper in Alabama, has this story about the rules for an independent candidate to get on the ballot in that state. Alabama and New Mexico are tied for having the nation’s most restrictive petition requirement for statewide non-presidential independent candidates, 3% of the last gubernatorial vote. No one has done the Alabama statewide petition since 2000.
California elects an Insurance Commissioner on a partisan basis. Last month, Steve Poizner changed his registration from Republican to independent. He served as California’s Republican Insurance Commissioner 2006-2010. He has just announced that he will run for his old office in 2018, but this time he will be an independent candidate.
He will be handicapped by the California law that does not permit independent candidates to have the label “independent” on the ballot. Instead he must have “party preference: none.”
