The Virginia State Board of Elections web page has returns for the Republican and Democratic primaries of June 14, 2017. In the Republican gubernatorial primary, With 93.4% of the precincts reporting, the two leading contenders are very close. Ed Gillespie, a former national chairman of the Republican Party, has 146,521 votes; Corey A. Stewart has 144,933. These numbers, of course, will continue to change. Stewart is known for being all-out in support of President Donald Trump.
Earlier this year, the Delaware House passed HB 89, which moves the non-presidential primary from September to April. The bill has not moved at all in the Senate, and the Delaware legislature will adjourn for the year in two weeks.
There are two versions of the bill. One version moves the deadline for newly-qualifying parties to get on the ballot from August to March, but the other version does not.
California Democratic legislators have amended one of the budget bills to alter procedures for recall petitions. SB 96 was introduced on January 11 and was strictly a budget bill. It passed the Senate on May 11. But on June 9, it was amended to include some provisions changing the law relative to recall elections. It says that signers may remove their names during the 30 days after a recall petition is submitted, and also extends the time for a recall to appear on the ballot, relative to when the petitions were submitted.
There is currently a recall underway against Democratic State Senator Josh Newman. Recall proponents have already submitted 31,000 signatures. If the bill is signed into law, it goes into effect immediately and would alter the rules for this recall. Provisions that allow signers to remove their names on petitions after it is too late for proponents to gather more signatures are fundamentally unfair. Proponents of petitions can never know if their petition will succeed, if signers can remove their names after the petition has been submitted. No one can predict how many signatures will be removed.
Extending the time between submission of a recall petition, and the date of the recall election, would have a different effect on the Newman petition. It would make it more likely that a recall would be held at the time of the regular June 2018 primary, instead of earlier as a stand-alone election.
Henry Grabar, a writer for Slate, and author of many books, here points out how stunning it is that France elected a president this year who had founded his own political party just a year previously. Furthermore, that party now appears likely to win a huge majority in the French Parliament. Grabar ends his piece by asking why something like that hasn’t happened in the United States.
Utah holds a special U.S. House election on November 7, 2017, to fill the soon-to-be vacant Third District seat. The web page of the United Utah Party says that it will sue of the state won’t put its nominee, Jim Bennett, on the ballot. See the fifth paragraph.
