On July 12, a Monmouth University Poll was released for the November 2017 New Jersey gubernatorial race. The results: Democrat Phil Murphy 53%; Republican Kim Guadagno 26%; “other” 6%; undecided 14%; won’t vote 1%.
The “other” candidates on the ballot are the nominees of the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties, and two independent candidates.
On June 6, McLain, Mississippi held a partisan election for Mayor. Three candidates were on the ballot, all as independents. Small towns in Mississippi technically have partisan elections, but to avoid the cost and work of a primary, it is common for all candidates to run as independents.
Steve McCluskey, a member of the Libertarian Party, was elected with 66 votes. He defeated incumbent Mayor Clyde Sylvester, who had 31 votes; and also he defeated Tom Roberts, who had 28 votes.
McLain has a population of 441, and is in Greene County, in the most southerly part of Mississippi, on the Alabama border. Thanks to Cody Quirk for this news.
The San Francisco Chronicle has this article, pointing out that there are no announced Republican candidates so far for most of the statewide 2018 offices. Although primary ballot access filing doesn’t occur until March 2018, no one can be raising campaign funds without filing a campaign finance statement first, and for most of the statewide offices, no such filings have happened. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
As already noted, on April 26, 2017, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Arkansas’ March petition deadline for non-presidential independents is unconstitutional unless the state can prove that it needs the deadline to be that early, to have enough time to check the petitions for validity. Moore v Martin, 15-3558.
On July 3, attorneys for the state asked the Eighth Circuit to stay that decision, while it prepared a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the state’s objections to that decision. But on July 11, the Eighth Circuit refused the state’s request. The state is still free to ask for U.S. Supreme Court review, but in the meantime, if it intends to try to prove that the March deadline is absolutely necesssary to give it enough time to check petition validity, it must start to marshall that evidence. That would be difficult to do, given that Arkansas has an August deadline for independent presidential petition deadlines, and presidential petitions for parties that just want to be on for president, and the state seems to have no trouble checking those petitions in time for the November election.
On July 10, California AB 837 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee. This is the bill that requires election officials, whether at the polls or when dealing with postal voters, to fully inform independent voters that they are free to choose a certain partisan primary ballot in the presidential primary. If the bill had been in effect in 2016, it would have guaranteed that independent voters were told that they could choose a Democratic, Libertarian, or American Independent presidential primary ballot.
The bill had already passed the Assembly and now goes to the Senate.
