On September 7, Androscoggin County Commissioner (Maine) Zachery Maher switched his party registration from Republican to Libertarian. The office is partisan and was last up in November 2016. He is up for re-election again in 2020. He represents district 7 (the county has 7 districts), and the vote in November 2016 was 5,587 for him, and 3,289 for his Democratic opponent. Here is his web page, announcing the change. Thanks to Bob Johnston and IndependentPoliticalReport for this news.
A U.S. District Court in Los Angeles will hear arguments in De La Fuente v Padilla, 2:16cv-3242, on Monday, October 2. The case challenges the number of signatures needed for an independent presidential candidate, which will probably be close to 200,000 in 2020, unless the lawsuit wins or possibly the legislature eases it.
The hearing had been set for Monday, September 11.
On September 8, the Virginia State Board of Elections voted to require all local election boards in the state to use vote-counting machines that have a paper trail. Twenty-two localities (either counties or independent cities) had been using electronic machines that don’t produce a paper trail. See this Washington Post story.
On September 5, New Hampshire held a special election to fill a vacant seat in the State House, Grafton 9 district. The results: Republican 50.9%; Democratic 46.8%; Libertarian 2.3%.
When this district voted in November 2016, it elected two members, and the only candidates were two Republicans and two Democrats. Republicans won both seats with a combined 56.3% of the vote.
Law Professor Vikram Amar has this article in Verdict, about the current initiative to divide California into three states. The article says that because one of the three new proposed states would have a fair chance of voting Republican in future presidential elections, the author of the initiative, Tim Draper, will likely face opposition from the Democratic Party.
Amar says if the National Popular Vote Plan were in place, though, that objection from Democrats would cease to exist. So Amar suggests that Draper, who is very wealthy, ought to support the National Popular Vote Plan.
