According to this story, Sal Albanese, a former New York city councilman and the Reform Party nominee for Mayor of New York city, has sued the New York City Campaign Finance Board over his exclusion from the mayoral debates. The Campaign Finance Board sponsors such debates. Albanese meets the spending criteria for inclusion, but not the polling criterion. However, as he points out, there have been no polls that mentioned him.
A radio station in Syracuse, New York, has broadcast a four-party debate for the November 7, 2017 election for Mayor of Syracuse. The four parties were the Democratic, Republican, Green, and Independence Parties. See this story.
Richard Johnston has this insightful Maclean’s article about the best form of proportional representation for British Columbia. Proportional representation is on the agenda in British Columbia, because when the Green Party’s three representatives in the legislature joined the government, they were promised that proportional representation would be taken seriously.
On October 2, one of the members of the Florida Constitution Review Commission said she will sponsor a change to the Florida Constitution pertaining to election law. Currently, Florida has closed primaries, except all registered voters can vote in the primary for a particular office if all the candidates for that particular office are from the same party. The proposed change would amend that, to say that “all candidates” only refers to candidates who filed to be on the ballot, not write-in candidates. See this press release from the Commission.
In the next few weeks, committees of the Commission will evaluate this idea. If it passes through committee, then the full commission will decide whether to adopt the idea. IF the full Commission adopts the idea, then the idea will appear on the ballot in November 2018 as a proposed Florida constitution change.
On October 27, the Kansas legislature, or its committees that handle election law bills, will hold a special informational hearing on ranked-choice voting, according to this story.
