As reported earlier, the Repubican-majority Michigan legislature repealed the straight-ticket device a year ago, but Democrats went to federal court to keep the device in place for this year’s election. Now some Republicans in Michigan are saying the existence of the device helped Republicans. See this story.
On November 8, voters in Ypsilanti Township in Michigan elected seven members to the Park Commission. In this partisan election, only four Democrats ran, and no Republicans ran. The Green Party ran two nominees and the Libertarian Party ran three nominees. With such a absence of major party candidates, it was inevitable that some of the minor party nominees would win, and they did. Two Greens and one Libertarian were elected. The two Greens are Shauna McNally (5,009 votes) and Stuart Collis (4,581 votes). The winning Libertarian, Elizabeth Corder, received 4,719 votes. The two losing Libertarians received 4,165 and 3,889 votes.
The four winning Democrats received these votes: 17,888; 17,544; 17,051; and 17,042. Ypsilanti Township is in Washtenaw County.
On November 8, Green Party nominee Tom Mair defeated his only opponent, Republican Christine Maxbauer, by 3,168 to 2,769, for Grand Traverse County, Michigan, County Board. See this story. Maxbauer was the incumbent and had been in office for ten years. This was Mair’s fifth time running as a Green Party nominee.
Grand Traverse County has a population of 86,000 and is in the northwest part of the lower peninsula of Michigan (the “hand”).
On November 8, North Dakota Representative Corey Mock (D-Grand Forks) was re-elected. He has been trying to improve the ballot access laws in his state. Last year he introduced a bill to repeal the law that requires a certain minimum of votes in a party’s primary before it can nominate candidates. That law is so severe, concerning state legislative elections, that no minor party nominee for legislature has been on the November ballot in North Dakota since 1976. The 2015 bill passed all committees but was defeated on the House floor.
Mock has said that he will try again in 2017 to repeal the law. No other state has a minimum vote in a primary for a ballot-listed candidate to be deemed nominated. In the past, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oklahoma had such laws, but they have all been repealed.
Here is his wikipedia page.
On November 15, Nevada State Senator Patricia Farley announced she had changed her voter registration from Republican to Independent. She had first been elected in 2014, from a Las Vegas district. She is in the middle of her four-year term. She said she will caucus with the Democrats. Thanks to Doug Goodman for this news.
She is the first independent in the Nevada legislature since 1964-1966.
