This East Oregonian story says a substantial number of Oregon voters are changing their registration from independent status, and from minor parties, and joining the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. This is because the primaries of those two parties are closed, and only members may vote in them. The Oregon primary, including a presidential primary, is May 17.
On April 5, the Washington, D.C. city council passed B21-0675, which has the effect of putting Bernie Sanders on the presidential primary ballot. The primary is June 14, and is the latest presidential primary in the nation. The “Primary Election Filing Requirement Emergency Act of 2016” changes the deadline for parties to certify candidates for the ballot. Sanders had paid his filing fee of $2,500 by the deadline, March 16. But the fee was paid to the Democratic Party of D.C., which did not then certify Sanders’ name until the next day, which was past the deadline.
The bill gives parties one more day to certify the names of candidates. The bill had been introduced on April 4 and passed the next day. The text still isn’t on the City Council’s web page.
On April 4, a New Jersey state trial court upheld New Jersey’s discriminatory ballot order (in some counties) for primary elections. See this story. The primary candidates endorsed by the party are all grouped together in a single column in the main part of the ballot. Candidates who are not part of the organization’s slate, but who have their own slate, are placed in another column to the right. But candidates who are not part of any slate are placed on the far-right portion of the ballot, where voters may not even notice their names.
See this editorial in the South Jersey Times about the lawsuit.
On April 4, Michael Schaefer, who is running for Congress in Nevada’s Democratic primary this year, sued to overturn the Nevada law that says candidates should be listed in alphabetical order on ballots. The lawsuit argues that the U.S. Constitution requires that all candidates be given an equal chance to be listed first on the ballot. If the lawsuit succeeds, the state could either use random methods to determine ballot order, or rotate names in different parts of the districts or the state as a whole. The case is Schaefer v Cegavske, 2:16cv-4.
The California Senate Elections & Constitutional Amendments Committee will hear SB 1288 on Tuesday, April 19. The bill, if enacted, would let any California city use ranked choice voting for its own elections. Currently, only charter cities may make that choice. The sponsors are Senators Mark Leno and Ben Allen. Allen is chair of the Senate Elections Committee.
