On December 27, five Michigan voters filed a lawsuit against the Governor, to force him to call a special election sooner than November 2018 to fill the vacancy in the 13th U.S. House district. See this Courthouse News Story. The district currently has no representative because Congressman John Conyers resigned last month.
The case is Rhodes v Snyder, e.d., 2:17cv-14186. It is assigned to Judge Mark A. Goldsmith, an Obama appointee. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
On December 29, Colorado State Senator Cheri Jahn, who represents the 20th district centered on Wheat Ridge, announced on her Facebook page that she has changed her registration from Democratic to independent. She has been in the legislature since 2000. She does not expect to run for re-election in 2018.
On December 29, the Commonwealth Court issued a 139-page Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, finding that Pennsylvania’s U.S. House districts do not comprise an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The decision says there is no way to draw a line between a plan that is constitutional and a plan that is unconstitutional. The decision cites past U.S. Supreme Court decisions on this subject, which will probably be obsolete when new decisions are released in the coming weeks or months. Thanks to How Appealing for the link. The case is League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 261 MD 2017.
Greg Guma has published “Vermont’s Progressive Candidates Blur Party Lines to Win” on his blog. Guma is a noted author of books about modern Vermont political history. The Vermont Progressive Party is easily the most successful third party in any state in the United States.
Rhode Island permits write-in votes in primary and general elections, and does not have a law requiring write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy in order to have their votes counted. Instead the Rhode Island Board of Elections counts all write-ins for all office, and publishes the results in the “Count Book” for that particular election. The only limit is that the book only includes write-ins for individuals who got at least 5 write-ins for any particular office.
Here is a link to “Count Books”. Click on the 2016 link to see the complete write-ins, starting on page 61. The contrast with Alabama’s treatment of write-ins in the special U.S. Senate election earlier this month could not be more stark.
The Rhode Island 2016 Count Book was just released a few weeks ago.
