According to this New York Times story, Hillary Clinton, who was campaigning in Puerto Rico, said publicly that she has always felt it is indefensible that U.S. adult citizens living in Puerto Rico can’t vote in presidential general elections. See the very end of the story.
SurveyUSA has released its general election presidential poll. The results, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee: Trump 45%, Clinton 40%, other or undecided 15%. The poll includes other pairs as well. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
This Stateline article reviews the status of various lawsuits around the country which may result in the need for states to redraw their U.S. House and/or state legislative districts before the 2016 election. These states include Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Since the article was written, the 3-judge U.S. District Court in Alabama has instructed the plaintiffs to draw their own districts by September 25. This suggests that the plaintiffs are likely to win their lawsuit, if they can do a satisfactory job of producing their own plan.
Ben Chipman, who has been elected to several terms in the Maine legislature as an independent, has become a Democrat. See this story. Before Chipman was in the legislature, he was an aide to Green Party Representative John Eder.
On September 4, Maryland state officials filed this brief in Dorsey v Lamone, 1:15cv-2170. The issue is the state’s policy of requiring almost four times as many signatures for a statewide independent as for an entire new party.
The state’s brief doesn’t actually explain any state interest in requiring more signatures for an independent than for a new party. It just cites the boiler-plate state interest in requiring ballot access restrictions, preventing frivolous candidates and keeping the ballot uncluttered.
The state claims that the independent petition procedure doesn’t really discriminate against independent candidates because parties have the burden of selecting officers and holding state conventions. The historical record shows that the independent procedure is obviously more difficult. In the period starting in 2000 to the present, only one statewide independent petition has succeeded in Maryland, but there have been 27 minor party candidates for statewide office on the Maryland ballot in the same period. The one statewide independent petition that succeeded was that of S. Rob Sobhani, a wealthy individual who ran for U.S. Senate as an independent in 2012. Minor party petitions that have succeeded in Maryland in the time period 2000 to the present include four Libertarian petitions, five Green petitions, one Independent Party petition, one Populist Party petition, and three Constitution Party petitions.
