On June 8, Scott Wooden changed his registration from “Republican” to “Libertarian”. He was elected to the Del Mar Union School Board in 2014, to a four-year term. The Del Mar School District runs the eight public schools in the city of Del Mar and the adjoining portion of San Diego known as Carmel Valley. Thanks to Ted Brown for this news. Wooden also sent a contribution to the national Libertarian Party. He has a PhD in biochemistry.
Carson Bruno, Research Fellow for the Hoover Institution, has this analysis of the June 2016 California primary. No incumbent for any partisan office was defeated in that primary, and it is plausible that no incumbent will lose in November either. Bruno also asks, “Is (the U.S. Senate outcome) the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Proposition 14?” Proposition 14 is the June 2010 ballot measure that installed the top-two system. Bruno also says that if top-two continues to exist, Republicans will need to find a way to prevent more than two Republicans running for statewide offices in future primaries. Of course, for the party apparatus to control who runs means that the original purpose of partisan primaries is diminished.
U.S. District Court Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr., will hold a trial in Green Party of Tennessee v Hargett on July 12-13 in Nashville. The issue is the state’s ballot access law for newly qualifying parties, which requires 33,816 valid signatures, even though the state only requires 25 signatures for an independent candidate (or 275 for an independent presidential candidate). A second issue is the state’s failure to have any administative procedure for a group to contest a filing that it failed to have enough valid signatures.
This case was filed in 2011 and is the oldest pending constitutional ballot access case in the nation. The plaintiffs are the Green and Constitution Parties. The Libertarian Party may intervene.
Iowa State Senator David Johnson has changed his registration from “Republican” to “independent.” See this story. Thanks to several people for the link. He changed his registration because he is unhappy with Donald Trump.
On June 8, the plaintiffs in Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission filed this brief. It argues that the FEC must consider new evidence that the Commission on Presidential Debates has so far not looked at. Some of that evidence relates to polling in the present-day era.
Also, the brief chides the FEC for apparently never having pursued an enforcement action against a debate sponsor, in its entire history. If the FEC has ever done that, the FEC briefs have not yet mentioned any such instance. Federal campaign law does not permit corporations to contribute to federal candidates or established political parties, and the Level the Playing Field plaintiffs argue that, in effect, the FEC is letting corporations contribute to the Republican and Democratic Parties, and their presidential campaigns, when corporations fund the Commission on Presidential Debates.
