The Delaware legislature has adjourned for the year. The only election law bill that passed this year is HB 47. It removes the requirement that an application for an absentee ballot be notarized. Delaware had been the only state in the nation that required such applications to be notarized.
The bill to move the non-presidential primary from September to April did not pass this year, but Delaware has two-year legislative sessions, so it could still pass in 2018.
Mike Becallo, an elected town councilor in Cicero, New York, has changed his registration from Republican to Libertarian. See this story. The office is partisan. Cicero has a population of 31,632 and is in Onondaga County, the same county as Syracuse.
On June 30, Vinz Koller filed this brief in Koller v Padilla, the lawsuit against the California law that tells presidential electors they must vote for the candidate who received the most popular votes in the state.
On June 30, Rocky De La Fuente filed this brief in De La Fuente v Padilla, c.d., 2:16cv-3242. This is the case that challenges the 2016 California requirement that independent candidates submit 178,039 signatures. No one has successfully used that petition since 1992, when Ross Perot needed 134,781 signatures.
The De La Fuente case has a status conference on July 6.
Here is a current tally for voter registration in Louisiana, for all parties, qualified and unqualified alike. All the qualified parties increased their share of the registration since November 2016, except for the Democratic Party.
The June 30 percentages for the qualified parties are: Democratic 44.07%; Republican 30.12%; Independent Party 1.94%; Libertarian .48%; Green .09%; Reform .04%; unqualified parties and independents 23.22%.
The percentages just before the November 2016 election were: Democratic 44.49%; Republican 29.73%; Independent Party 1.87%; Libertarian .47%; Green .08%; Reform .04%; unqualified parties and independents 23.28%. Back then, the Independent Party wasn’t ballot-qualified, but it became ballot-qualified early in 2017. The law requires 1,000 registrants plus payment of a fee of $1,000, and no one paid the fee until early in 2017.
The largest unqualified party continues to be the Conservative Party, which had 844 registrants in November 2016 and which now has 839. Thanks to Randall Hayes for the new data.
