The period for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to file for the Oklahoma primaries has opened. See this story. Candidates qualify by a filing fee of $2,500. The deadline is December 9.
4
On December 7, Hillary Clinton submitted her Virginia ballot access petition. This story doesn’t say how many raw signatures were submitted, but perhaps the information will be available soon. The requirement is 5,000 signatures, due December 10.
On December 1, the Washington, D.C. city council unanimously approved resolution PR21-302. It says that the city will launch a public relations campaign to gain support for statehood. The resolution points out that the District of Columbia has a greater population than either Wyoming or Vermont. It says that D.C. has a greater gross domestic product (gdp) than fourteen states.
The Mayor is directed to set up a working group by January 1, 2016, that will attempt to collect 1,000,000 signatures. The petition will then be presented to Congress and to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, both of which are set for July 2016. This implies that the city hopes to collect the 1,000,000 signatures before July 2016. Here is the wording of the Resolution, which had been introduced on July 14, 2015.
Sam Wang has this article about gerrymandering in the New York Times. He says there are several statistical methods that should allow anyone to measure when partisan gerrymandering is excessive. He hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court will outlaw extreme partisan gerrymandering some day.
The Virginia deadline for candidates petitioning to get on a presidential primary ballot is Thursday, December 10. On December 4, Bernie Sanders became the first Democrat to submit a petition. This story says he submitted 17,882. The requirement is 5,000.