Level the Playing Field is the group that asked the Federal Election Commission late last year to require the Commission on Presidential Debates to expand entry into the general election presidential debates. Level the Playing Field has been working hard to garner publicity and to get endorsements from influential individuals. The Associated Press article is here, and here is a different article in The Hill.
This interesting article from the Times of Israel has a picture of Israeli ballots, and explains the voting procedure. Thanks to Steve Chessin for the link.
On March 17, the Third Circuit heard Balsam v Guadagno, the case in which some New Jersey voters argue that they do not wish to join either the Democratic or the Republican Party, yet they feel that the primary election is so important, they are unjustly deprived of political power by not being allowed to vote in the primaries of those parties.
The Third Circuit web page now has a link to the 30-minute oral argument.
Current Vermont election laws says that if a party entitled to a primary doesn’t nominate anyone at its primary, then the party committee can choose a nominee after the primary is over. This year’s omnibus election law bill, HB 477, deletes this method for nominating a candidate. The Progressive Party, which uses this committee method fairly often, is hoping to get that part of the bill deleted. The bill has a hearing in the House Government Operations Committee on March 18. Thanks to Rick Kissell for this news.
On March 16, the Texas House Elections Committee heard testimony about HB 1288, which would abolish the straight-ticket device. See this story, which ways that Democratic and Republican Party officials testified against the bill. The fact that the bill has had a hearing this early in the session suggests it has a reasonable chance of passing.
The same hearing took testimony on HB 464, which would force minor party nominees to pay a filing fee. Current law requires candidates who run in primaries to pay a filing fee. The rationale for the Texas filing fee was originally that the money should be used to pay for some of the costs of holding the primary, but the U.S. Supreme Court has said the only reason that filing fees can exist is to keep ballots from being too crowded. Therefore, the purpose of the filing fee now is to keep primary ballots from being too crowded. Smaller qualified parties nominate by convention in Texas, at their own expense, so there is no obvious reason to require their candidates to pay filing fees. The newspaper story linked above doesn’t describe the testimony on HB 464. If anyone can report on that, please comment.
