The Chicago Reader, the largest free weekly newspaper in Chicago, has commentary that criticizes the Illinois election law that requires candidates for Chicago citywide office to obtain 12,500 valid signatures. The Mayoral election is in February 2015, which means the signatures must be collected at the time of bad weather. The author speculates that incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel may be the only name on the ballot.
Chicago holds nonpartisan elections for all city office.
On November 15, Virgin Islands election authorities finished the canvass of the November 4 vote. Incumbent State Senator Alicia “Chucky” Hansen, an independent, received fewer than half as many write-in votes as needed to win. See this story. She had been removed from the ballot on October 24 by the Territory’s Supreme Court, which felt that her misdemeanor conviction some years ago made her ineligible. The charter of the Virgin Islands says that the Territory’s Senate is the “sole judge” of qualifications of members, and furthermore the Governor had issue her a pardon.
In a race that could take several more weeks to resolve, challenger Patty Lopez leads incumbent Raul Bocanegra in California Assembly District 39. Both are Democrats, a result of California’s Top-Two system. Consequently, the result will not effect the partisan make-up of the state assembly.
Until last night, Lopez had been leading by 7 votes for the past week. Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said today there is still about 113,000 votes county-wide to be counted, so there could be enough in that district to shift that race’s outcome. The next results will be announced on Tuesday, Logan says.
The closeness of the race was a surprise to politicos, since Lopez spent very little money and didn’t have significant name recognition. Bocanegra has accused Lopez of using a GOP political operative to engineer the upset, a charge Lopez has denied.
New totals expected to be released Tuesday. You can keep up with the latest count here.
On November 17, a Michigan House committee will hold a hearing on HB 5974. Introduced by Representative Pete Lund (R-Macomb County), it says the winner of the popular vote for president in Michigan will get nine electoral votes, and then for every 1.5% above 50%, he or she will get another electoral vote. The proposal seems designed to give both major party presidential candidates some electoral votes, but no one else. Here is a link to the bill. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
Washington state started using the top-two system in 2008, but only this year was there any U.S. House race in that state between two members of the same party. In this year’s election, the 4th district incumbent, Doc Rogers, retired, and two Republicans who wanted to replace him placed first and second in the August 2014 primary. The only two candidates in November were Dan Newhouse and Clint Didier. The 4th district is centered on Yakima and Kennewick.
Although Washington election officials are still counting ballots, as of the evening of November 13 the state was reporting 1,974,940 votes (not counting write-in votes) in the ten U.S. House districts combined. In 2012, the vote for U.S. House in the same ten districts had been 3,006,266.
Proponents of the top-two system frequently say that general election races between two members of the same party are better for general election voters, because most districts are safe for one major party or the other, but at least when there are two candidates from the same party, the race has the potential to be unpredictable and exciting.
However, the total vote cast in the Fourth District this year for U.S. House dropped by 35.5%. For all ten races in the state combined, it dropped by a smaller amount, 34.3%. Although political junkies may enjoy congressional races in which only one party has candidates, it seems the voting public as a whole is slightly less interested in voting in such an election as in a normal election.
