Joe Scarborough has switched his voter registration from Republican to independent. He lives in Connecticut, a state with partisan registration. He had said in July that he would be doing this.
He is an attorney, and was elected to Congress as a Republican from Florida in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000. Currently he is a TV anchor on MSNBC. See his wikipedia page here.
CNN is reporting that California State Senator Kevin de Leon will run for U.S. Senate next year. He is leader of the State Senate, and a Democrat. See this story. Because incumbent U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein is running for re-election next year, and because no well-known Republican has announced for this seat, if the CNN story is true, it is likely that California’s top-two system will again produce a general election ballot for U.S. Senate with only two Democrats. Write-ins are not allowed, so just as in 2016, voters who don’t wish to vote for a Democrat in 2018 will not be able to vote for that office at all. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
Missouri is holding a special election to fill the vacant 8th district State Senate seat on November 7, 2017. There are three candidates on the ballot, a Republican, a Democrat, and an independent. According to this story, the Republican nominee has charged that his Democratic opponent’s husband signed the petition for the independent candidate. The Republican nominee feels this is scandalous behavior.
On October 11, the High Court of Kenya ruled that in the re-run of the presidential election set for October 26, all candidates who were on the original presidential ballot must be included on that ballot. The electoral commission had been planning to only let the top two candidates into the new election. See this story. The case was brought and won by Ekuru Aukot, who had come in fifth in the original election, out of eight candidates. The High Court had earlier ruled that the first election was invalid due to unfair and illegal violations of the election law, and had said the election must be run again. The first election had been held on August 8.
Matthew Yglesias here writes that the U.S. would be better off if it used proportional representation, especially for Congress. Yglesias is a founder of Vox, a well-read politics blog. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
