Tunisia’s new constitution requires that the initiative process be created, at least for local government. So far, the process has not yet been implemented. This article, by Joe Mathews of California, gives more detail.
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Neil Weare, head of We the People Project and an activist to gain voting rights for U.S. citizens living in U.S. territories, will file a new lawsuit on that topic, according to this story. Thanks to HowAppealing for the link.
This Dallas Morning News story raises the idea that the upcoming August 6, 2015 Republican presidential debate could provide a means for a court challenge over the meaning of Article II’s “natural born citizen” requirement for President. If Fox is limiting the debate to the top ten Republicans, and Ted Cruz is one of those ten, the article says conceivably whoever is eleventh might have standing to contest whether Cruz qualifies. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
California State Senator Sharon Runner has introduced SB 49, to give the Governor discretion to cancel special legislative elections if only one person files to be on the ballot. See this story.
Current law already says that a special election should be canceled if only one candidate files to be on the ballot and no one files as a declared write-in candidate. However, it is believed that there has been no instance of only one candidate filing for a legislative special election, and no write-ins filing either, at least back to 1967. Before 1967, California special legislative elections were non-partisan and had no party labels on the ballot. The existing law is in any event not functional, because the deadline for a write-in candidate to file is two weeks before any election, and it is logistically impossible to cancel an election within two weeks of the expected election date. The early voting period is four weeks before election day.
A handful of other states don’t hold legislative elections (regular or special) if only one person files to be on the ballot, but they are all states that either don’t permit write-in votes, or which set a write-in filing deadline months before the election. Those states are Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, and Oklahoma.
The Washington Post has this article about the high cost to the government of Virginia, to defend its redistricting plan in federal court. The challengers argue that the redistricting plan packs too many African-Americans into a minority of districts in which they are in the majority, thus diminishing their clout in many other districts.