The initiative to remove party labels from California ballots for Congress and partisan state office will not qualify for the ballot in 2016.
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On April 27, the Maine Supreme Court refused the Secretary of State’s appeal in Birks v Dunlap, so the lower court opinion stands. The lower court had ruled that the Secretary of State was wrong to invalidate tens of thousands of signatures on the initiative to legalize marijuana. The issue was whether petition sheets should be invalidated because the Notary Public’s signature on the sheet doesn’t closely match the Notary’s signature on the Notary’s application to be a Notary.
The lower court said there are many reasons why an individual’s signature doesn’t always look the same. See this story.
Austria held a presidential election on April 24. No one got 50%, so there will be a run-off on May 22. See this wikipedia article about the election. The two candidates in the run-off are Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party, and Alexandier Van der Belle of the Green Party. Austria’s President is the head of state, but not head of government, and therefore not the most powerful office-holder.
On April 29, Rasmussen released this poll for the presidential election in November.
The question is, “If the presidential election is between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, you would…” and then apparently four choices were offered: Trump, Clinton, “vote for some other candidate”, not vote, or undecided. The results are: Clinton 38%, Trump 38%, other 16%, not vote 6%, undecided 2%.
On April 29, the Maine Libertarian Party filed this request for reconsideration of the April 25 denial of injunctive relief. The party had asked the judge to put the party on the ballot, or at least to restore its registrants and allow time for newly-registered party members to be tallied. The basis for the request is that the overwhelming weight of authority says that a December 1, 2015 deadline for a new party to qualify is far too early.
The April 25 order seemed to reflect the judge’s belief that the party wanted to participate in the June 14, 2016 primary, but the party does not wish to do so. The April 25 order had said there would be “chaos” if the party were ordered onto the ballot now, but did not decide the constitutional issue of the early deadline.