John Arnold, the Texas billionaire who has contributed $2,750,000 to pass the top-two initiative in Oregon, is also the biggest donor to a PAC that has spent over $800,000 to help defeat California Congressman Mike Honda in this year’s election. See this story. Honda is a Democrat running for re-election against another Democrat, Ro Khanna.
On October 31, both sides filed final briefs in the U.S. District Court in Green Party of Pennsylvania v Aichele, eastern, 2:14cv-3299. This is the case filed this year against several Pennsylvania ballot access laws: (1) the ban on out-of-state circulators; (2) the requirement that each petition sheet be notarized; (3) the requirement that signers from different counties can’t sign the same sheet; (4) the requirement that voters can’t sign more than one petition for the same office; (5) the administrative decision to invalidate signatures from persons eligible to register to vote who haven’t actually registered, given the wording of the law that says they can sign. Several other points in the original complaint have already been resolved favorably, such as the requirement that signatures are invalid if the signer doesn’t add the year in the “date” column.
Here is the brief of the minor parties.
This case should not be confused with the other Pennsylvania ballot access case, Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Aichele, on the issue of putting petitioning groups at risk of over $100,000 in court costs if petitions are held invalid. That is also pending in the U.S. District Court, before another judge.
On October 31, the California Secretary of State released a new registration tally, as of October 20. The previous tally had been as of September 5. Here is a link to the new data.
Compared to last month’s tally, every party gained in absolute numbers, and the number of independent voters also rose. But between the two tallies, the percentage of the electorate registered “Democratic” declined from 43.43% to 43.30%; the Republican share declined from 28.23% to 28.11%. But the share registered into each of the qualified minor parties increased, except that Peace & Freedom declined from .4422% to .4417%.
The largest unqualified party that has asked for a tally of its registrants is the Constitution Party, which went from 347 to 355 registrants.
The largest percentage increase for any group of voters was the Libertarian registration, which increased 2.78%.
On October 27, the chair of the St. Louis city election commission wrote a letter to independent candidate Jennifer Florida, saying that her campaign literature must not refer to herself as an “independent Democrat.” The letter says such literature “shall be seized by the St. Louis City Election Board.”
Florida is the incumbent Recorder of Deeds. She was appointed to that post earlier this year, too late to run in any party primary, so she petitioned as an independent candidate. She is a life-long Democrat and wants the voters to know that. In response to the threatening letter, on October 31 she filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the Election Commission is violating the First Amendment. Florida v Bd. of Election Cmsrs. for the City of St. Louis, 4:14cv-1840.
On October 31, the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed the State Election Commission, and said voters will elect a representative for the 114th State House district on November 4. The election ballot has one Republican, one Democrat, and one Green listed, but the instructions will say that votes cast for the Republican listed on the ballot will not be counted. Here is the order. It is conceivable that later the Court will also issue an order for a special election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
