On December 6, Oklahoma State Senator J. J. Dossett (D-Owasso) introduced SB 6, to abolish the straight-ticket device. Here is the bill. Thanks to Richard Prawdzienski for the news.
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No Republican ran for Attorney General of Washington state this year, so the only two candidates on the ballot were Democrat Bob Ferguson and Libertarian Joshua Trumbull. Trumbull carried two counties, both in northeastern Washington. He carried Stevens County with 52.79% and Lincoln County with 52.74%.
U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila, who is handling the California lawsuit over whether presidential electors must vote for the candidates they are expected to vote for, wants all the briefs filed by December 14. The case is Koller v Brown, in the northern district. Davila is an Obama appointee.
The New York Times has this editorial in its December 12, 2016 edition, supporting a proposed New York bill that would bar candidates from the ballot if they don’t release their income tax returns before the election. This would clearly be unconstitutional under the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court opinion U.S. Term Limits v Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, which says that neither states nor congress can add to the qualifications to run for federal office.
The editorial quotes legal scholar Laurence Tribe as saying, “Ballot access requirements vary significantly from state to state, and it seems that New York might be able to simply add tax disclosure as a procedural ballot access requirement.”
On December 12, a U.S. District Court Judge in Colorado ruled from the bench that he would not grant any relief to two Colorado Democratic presidential electors who say they may want to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. The ruling so far is oral only, and has not been put in writing. Thanks to the Election Law Blog for the news. According to this story, one of the Democrats says he still isn’t going to vote for the ticket that he was expected to vote for.