On October 17, Maine Representative Norman Higgins announced that he has changed his registration from Republican to independent. He was first elected in 2014 and represents part of Piscataquis County.
The Maine House now has 74 Democrats, 69 Republicans, 6 independents, 1 Green, and 1 vacancy. See this story.
On October 17, an Alaska Superior Court ruled that if the Democratic Party wants to let registered independents run in the Democratic primary, then the party can do that, even though it violates election law. Alaska Democratic Party v State, 1ju-17-563. See this story. The 33-page ruling can be read here.
If an independent wins the Democratic primary, then, according to the court ruling, he or she will be labeled on the November ballot as a Democrat, because that is the party that nominated the individual. Thanks to Jim Riley for the link.
Here is a news story from North Carolina about the passage of SB 656, the ballot access bill.
UPDATE: see this story, which says that two Democratic Representatives voted to override the Governor’s veto.
On the morning of Tuesday, October 17, the North Carolina House passed SB 656. Because the Senate passed it the day before, it is now law. Governor Roy Cooper had vetoed it, but the legislature has now overridden his veto.
Many Democratic members of the House said in debate on October 17 that they support the ballot access liberalization, but that they voted to uphold the gubernatorial veto because of the unrelated part of the bill that eliminates judicial primary elections in 2018.
As a result of the success of SB 656, there are now only four states without some means for a presidential candidate (running outside the two major parties) to get on the ballot with the support of 25,000 or fewer voters: California, Texas, Michigan, and Indiana. For U.S. House, the only states that ever require petitions in excess of 8,000 signatures are now Georgia and Illinois.
Here is the text of the final draft of SB 656.
On October 16, the North Carolina Senate again passed SB 656, which greatly improves ballot access for minor parties, and also makes substantial improvements for independent candidates. The re-vote was needed because the Governor had vetoed the bill last week. The bill received votes from more than the required 60% of the members who voted. The vote was 26-15.
The House will vote on the bill on Tuesday, October 17.
