On Monday, July 27, U.S. District Court Judge James M. Moody heard oral arguments in Moore v Martin, e.d., 4:14cv-65. The issue is the March petition deadline in effect in 2014 for non-presidential independent candidates to submit their petitions. The argument lasted 90 minutes. Judge Moody indicated a decision will be out in two or three weeks.
This article from Presidential Debate News summarizes what has been said on several important television public affairs programs recently, about the Commission on Presidential Debates and its exclusionary rule on who gets invited to debate.
Chuck Sweeny, senior political editor for the Rockford (Illinois) Register Star, writes here that the August 6 Fox Republican presidential debate is badly planned. The top ten Republicans, based on polls, will participate.
Sweeny says that instead, Fox News should hold two debates, each with eight candidates. Random procedures should be used to determine which eight candidates are in each debate. To make the two debates equal in viewership, they should both be in the evening, so that would probably involve debates on two different evenings (Sweeny doesn’t say this but it seems to follow from what he does say). Sweeny says many polls only have 300 or so respondents and the Fox News decision is not only unfair, it is arbitrary because there continues to be a virtual tie for tenth place and also ninth place.
On July 20, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an opinion in Petition to Submit Ballot Question to Concord Township Voters, no. 126 MAP 2014. The issue was how to construe a Pennsylvania election law that governs local initiative petitions for a second class township to consider switching to first class township status.
The initiative petition had enough valid signatures, but it was rejected on the grounds that it was not filed in the correct year. The petition was submitted in 2014 by some voters in Concord, a township in Delaware County.
The law says, “At the first general or municipal election occurring, at least 90 days after the ascertainment that any township of the second class has a population density of at least 300 inhabitants to the square mile, and after a petition signed by at least 5% of the registered voters of the township has been filed, the question of whether such township of the second class shall become a township of the first class shall be submitted to the voters.”
The lower state courts had interpreted this law to mean that such a petition can only be filed in the first year after the census results are known, which would have been 2012. The proponents of the initiative read the law to mean that the election should be held as soon as the population data is known and as soon as an initiative petition has been submitted. The Supreme Court agreed with the latter interpretation by a vote of 3-2.
Here is the dissent, which believes that the last time that law was revised, the drafters made a drafting error involving commas.
According to the New York City Board of Elections, Donald Trump registered in 1992 as a Republican. He remained a Republican until 1999, when he registered into the Independence Party. At the time, the Independence Party was the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party, and Trump briefly considered seeking the Reform Party’s nomination for president in 2000.
In 2001 he registered into the Democratic Party. In 2009 he registered back into the Republican Party. In 2011 he became an independent, but in 2012 he rejoined the Republican Party.
