On October 9, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina vetoed SB 656, the bill that greatly improves ballot access. However, his veto message says he vetoed it because of an unrelated provision affecting judicial primaries. There is some possibility that the legislature’s conference committee could meet again, delete the judicial part of the bill, and send it through the legislature again.
Data scientists Vinad Bakthavachalam and Jake Fuentes have published this study of the electoral college. They estimate that in future U.S. presidential elections in which the popular vote margin between the two leading candidates will be 3% or less, there will be a 30% chance that the electoral college winner will be a different individual than the national popular vote winner. Thanks to Justin Levitt for the link.
Case studies: The 2000 electoral map and the 2016 electoral map.
On October 6, the Seventh Circuit agreed with the U.S. District Court, that Illinois does not violate the U.S. Constitution by requiring the state house nominees of unqualified parties to submit a petition of 5% of the last vote cast, to get on the general election ballot. Tripp v Scholz, 16-3469. Here is the 27-page opinion. The case had been filed by the Green Party in 2014.
The two plaintiff-candidates each needed approximately 2,400 valid signatures. The court felt that it is not that difficult to collect that number of signatures in the 90-day window the law requires. The party also complained about the need to notarize the signatures, but the court said a circulator is free to make a single trip to a notary public and have all his or her sheets notarized at the same time. The party also complained that some state house districts lack any population centers (or else that if there were any population centers, the district boundaries bisected such towns), but the court noted that Harrisburg, Illinois, is entirely within one of the districts, and it has a population of 9,000.
The decision is by Judge Joel Flaum, a Reagan appointee. It was also signed by Judges Diana Sykes, a Bush Jr. appointee, and William Bauer, a Ford appointee.
The New York City Board of Elections has posted the candidate list for the city election of November 7. See it here. There are seven candidates for Mayor, a smaller number than usual.
The independent in the mayoral race, Bo Dietl, has the ballot slogan “Dump the Mayor.” Long ago, when Lenora Fulani was the New Alliance Party candidate for Mayor, she was not permitted to have the ballot logo, “Dump Koch.” That was a reference to the incumbent at the time, Ed Koch.
Also this year, the Republican nominee has a separate ballot line with the label, “Stop DeBlasio.”
The News-Gazette, daily newspaper of Champaign, Illinois, has this October 8 editorial, advocating that Illinois ballot access laws be eased. Thanks to Diana Visek for the link.
