The Bend Bulletin has this editorial, praising the Independent Party of Oregon for opening its primary to independent voters. Under a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1986, Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut, any party entitled to a government-administered primary can at any time open its primary to independent voters, regardless of state law. The Independent Party has taken this step, as it gets ready for its first government primary in 2016.
The Delegates to the U.S. House from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands have this op-ed, criticizing the U.S. for depriving citizens who live in overseas territories from voting for President and for a voting member of either house of Congress.
The op-ed also suggests that the almost 1,000,000 Puerto Ricans who now reside in Florida would likely support whichever presidential candidate speaks out about this problem.
Last year, an Ohio Republican Party activist agreed to pay an attorney $250,000 for the attorney’s work in keeping the Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate off the ballot. The Republican activist, Terry Casey, is a state employee. He promised to pay the legal bills for the carpenter who challenged the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate’s petition to get on the primary ballot. No one could legally have brought that challenge except a member of the Libertarian Party, but the carpenter was deemed to be a Libertarian because he had voted in the 2012 Libertarian primary.
Ohio election law does not permit campaign contributions to gubernatorial candidates in excess of $10,000. On April 15, the Ohio Libertarian 2014 gubernatorial candidate filed this complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission. The complaint charges that the Kasich campaign accepted the in-kind contribution of $250,000, in violation of the law, and therefore should be subject to the penalty, which is triple the amount of the excess donation.
The Ohio Elections Commission is composed of 3 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and one independent.
The British House of Commons election of May 7, 2015 will have 3,963 candidates in the 650 districts, for an average of 6.1 candidates per race. See the wikipedia article about the May 2015 election here.
By comparison, the U.S. House of Representatives election of November 2014 gave the average voter 2.5 candidates to choose from. Over half the U.S. House districts had no one on the ballot except Republicans and Democrats. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
On April 15, the California Assembly Elections Committee passed AB 372, by Assemblymember Frank Bigelow (R-O’Neals). The vote was 4-2. Even though the bill’s sponsor is a Republican, the only Republican on the Committee who attended the hearing, Assemblymember Shannon Grove, voted “no.” The other “no” vote was by Democratic Assemblymember Mike Gatto. The other four Democrats, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Richard Gordon, Kevin Mullin, and Henry Perea, voted “yes.”
California does not now require any write-in candidates to pay a filing fee. The bill says if a write-in candidate for Congress or partisan state office places second in the primary, and therefore moves on to the November ballot, that candidate must pay a filing fee after the primary is over. The fee is 2% of the annual salary for statewide office, and 1% for district office.
No one testified in favor of the bill. Three witnesses, including one Libertarian and two Peace & Freedom members, testified against the bill. The sponsor of the bill was the only candidate who filed to be on the June 2014 primary ballot, but a Libertarian write-in candidate, Patrick Hogan, filed to have his votes counted in the primary. Because Hogan was the only declared write-in candidate, he placed second and appeared on the November ballot. He was the only California Libertarian who appeared on the November 2014 ballot for a partisan office, and he got 25.75% of the vote. Thanks to Gale Morgan for this news.
The bill is being amended to provide a procedure for a write-in candidate who placed second in the primary to then submit a petition in lieu of filing fee instead of being required to pay the filing fee. The amendment language is not yet available.
