On November 6, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Austin, Texas, said it won’t have its opinion on Texas U.S. House and legislative redistricting out in time to affect the 2016 election. See this story. The case is Perez v Perry, w.d., 5:11cv360.
News sources are reporting that Jeb Bush didn’t file a complete slate of candidates for Delegate to the Republican National Convention in Alabama. However, Josh Putnam, an expert on major party presidential primaries, here explains why it makes no practical difference.
On November 10, the Ninth Circuit issued this opinion in Public Integrity Alliance v City of Tucson, 15-16142. By a vote of 2-1, the decision says that Tucson’s system of electing city council members violates Equal Protection.
Tucson has partisan city elections, and elects one city councilmember from each of six wards. In the partisan primary, candidates run within districts, so each district primary nominates someone to represent each party. But in the general election, the election is at-large.
Both the majority opinion and the dissent are flawed. The majority opinion, by Judge Alex Kozinski, a Reagan appointee, says, “Without the primary, there could be no candidate to compete in the general election; without the general election, the primary winners would sit on their hands. Because a candidate must win a primary in order to compete in the general election, the ‘right to choose a representative is in fact controlled by the primary’.”
This is a false statement, because Tucson has procedures for independent candidates to petition directly onto the general election ballot.
The opinion was co-signed by visiting U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Piersol, a Clinton appointee. The dissent is by Judge Richard Tallman, also a Clinton appointee, although a Republican. The dissent is also flawed, because it says “The Supreme Court has been reticent to apply strict scrutiny to state election laws. It has done so only to evaluate discriminatory poll taxes, property ownership requirements for voting, and durational residency requirements.” The Supreme Court has also applied strict scrutiny to ballot access, most recently in 1992 in Norman v Reed.
Also, the dissent says on page 18 that the U.S. Supreme Court case American Party of Texas v White held that states may establish waiting periods before voters may be permitted to change their registration and participate in another party’s primary. That is untrue; the case that did that is Rosario v Rockefeller.
The New York Times has this story about polling inaccuracies in several important national elections this year, around the world. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
After every presidential and/or congressional election in the United States, there are always three leading sources for election returns. For the 2014 election, however, two of those three sources still haven’t been published. The only one that has been published is “Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 4, 2014.” The author is the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. The publication is free but it is often difficult to obtain a copy; anyone who wants one might ask his or her member of the U.S. House for help.
The Federal Election Commission always publishes an election returns book, called “Federal Elections (insert year here)”. But it isn’t out yet for 2014. Congressional Quarterly always publishes “America Votes” but the 2014 volume isn’t out yet. These latter two publications are more useful than the Clerk’s book, because the latter two publications include primary election returns. But the Clerk’s book doesn’t. The two late publications will probably be out by the end of 2015.
