According to this story, Virginia State Senators Richard Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) and John Cosgrove (R-Chesapeake) plan to introduce bills this year to let parties close their primaries. The Obenshain proposal would also change the voter registration form, so that the form would ask applicants to choose a party, or independent status. The bills don’t appear to have been introduced yet. Thanks to Mike Drucker for the link.
Bloomberg BNA has this detailed news story about the oral argument on January 5 about presidential debates.
Assuming U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions resigns his Senate seat to become Attorney General, there will be no special election to replace him during 2017. Alabama law permits a Governor to call a special election in an odd year to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, but it does not require the Governor to do that.
On January 5, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley said he won’t call a special election in 2017. Instead there will be a special election in November 2018, for the remaining two years of that term. This is disappointing, because last year a U.S. District Court had ruled that when Alabama holds a special congressional election, for that special election the normal 3% petition requirement must be eased. See this news story about the Governor’s decision. He isn’t holding a special election in 2017 in order to save money.
Phillip Brownlee, opinion page editor of the Wichita Eagle, here recommends that the legislature pass HB 2017, the bill that eases ballot access in special U.S. House elections. His column puts more emphasis on the part of the bill that modernizes schedules for special elections, but the bottom does mention the part of the bill that eases the petition burdens on independent candidates. The bill lowers the petition requirement from 4% of the number of registered voters (approximately 17,000 signatures) to exactly 1,000 signatures.
The column does not mention the other ballot access improvement, to let qualified minor parties nominate in such elections with no petition needed. That part of the bill makes it easy for the Libertarian Party to run someone.
Intelligence agencies of the United States have just published a booklet, “Intelligence Community Assessment”, which sets forth evidence that Russia, and the television network Russia Today (RT), intervened in the United States presidential elections of 2012 and 2016. The publication is from the “Intelligence Community”, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA. Here is a link to the booklet.
Annex A, in the second half of the report, on page six, says, “In an effort to highlight the alleged ‘lack of democracy’ in the United States, RT broadcast, hosted, and advertised third-party candidate debates and ran reporting supportive of the political agenda of these candidates. The RT hosts asserted that the U.S. two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham.'”
In 2012 RT carried the general election presidential debate between Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Virgil Goode, and Rocky Anderson. In 2016, during the primary season in the first half of the year, RT broadcast a debate between various candidates for the Green Party nomination. It also carried a debate between some of the candidates for the Libertarian nomination. Thanks to antiwar.com for the link. See this antiwar commentary about the report.
