On April 6, a U.S. District Court Judge in Illinois said she needs more time to finish writing the decision in Libertarian Party of Illinois v State Board of Elections, so she postponed it until April 16. The issue is the state’s law requiring new parties to run a full slate of candidates.
Normally judges don’t say when they will release an opinion, but this judge has been setting dates on which the decision would appear. This is the fourth postponement.
Kentucky and Mississippi are the only two states that elect Governors this year. According to this story, an independent candidate will try to collect the 5,000 signatures needed to get on the ballot for Governor of Kentucky. The signatures are due August 11.
The candidate’s name was Terrill Newman, but on March 31 he legally changed his name to Gatewood Galbraith. The original Gatewood Galbraith died in 2012, but he had quite a following when he ran for Governor outside the two major parties in recent past Kentucky elections. In 2011 he polled 74,860 votes (9.0%) as an independent. In 1999 he was the Reform Party nominee and polled 88,930 votes (15.3%).
The new Gatewood Galbraith says he respects the legacy of the original Galbraith, and will try to carry on Galbraith’s platform and ideas.
On April 1, the Vermont Senate passed SB 29, which allows unregistered individuals to register to vote on election day. The bill now goes to the House. Thanks to Mike Drucker for this news.
On the evening of April 6 (Monday), C-SPAN will air 90 minutes of Independent Voting’s morning panel of March 14, 2015. That C-SPAN program will air at 9:30 pm, eastern time. On the evening of April 7, at 10:40 pm, eastern time, C-SPAN will air the afternoon panel.
The morning panel included Paul Johnson (former Mayor of Phoenix), Joan Blades (founder of Moveon.org), Dr. Lenora Fulani, and Tio Hardiman, who ran for Illinois Governor in the Democratic primary last year.
The afternoon panel had Johnson, Rob Richie of Fairvote, John Opdycke of IndependentVoting, Chad Peace of the California Independent Voters Project, Harry Kresky of IndependentVoting, and Michael Hardy of IndependentVoting.
The leaders of IndependentVoting, for the most part, were once leaders of the New Alliance Party.
The Telegraph of Great Britain has compiled this chart, which averages in the results of all recent leading polls for the May 7 House of Commons election. The compilation shows Labour and Conservative each with 34%. UKIP has 14%; Liberal Democrat has 8%; Green has 6%. That leaves 4% for other parties, including especially the Scottish National Party, which is expected to win most of the Scotland seats.
SNP would have a better showing of the vote, except for the fact that it only runs in Scotland, and Scotland only comprises 8% of the population of the United Kingdom.
It seems likely that if the two largest parties in the end to win only 68% of the total vote, there will be renewed discussion in Great Britain for ranked-choice voting, if not proportional representation.
