According to this article, the organization called Openly Secular (www.openlysecular.org) hopes to persuade eight states to remove provisions from their State Constitutions that forbid non-believers from holding state office. All the states are southern states, except for Maryland. The laws are not enforced. Thanks to Howard Bashman for the link.
On March 11, the West Virginia legislature gave final approval to SB 249, which abolishes the straight ticket device. On March 16 the bill was sent to the Governor.
On March 18, the Arkansas Senate State Agencies & Governmental Affairs Committee passed SB 803 unanimously. Current Arkansas law says no one can run for two offices simultaneously in a primary. The bill would provide that someone can run for either President or Vice-President, and also run for Congress. The sponsor says he wants U.S. Senator Tom Cotton to have the freedom to run for President and for re-election to the Senate in 2020. Senator Cotton, who is a freshman U.S. Senator, has never said he intends to run for President in 2020.
On March 17, California held an election to fill three vacant State Senate seats. In the 37th district, in Orange County, three Republicans were on the ballot, and the ballot had write-in space. Even though this was the only office on the ballot, more than 1,200 voters cast an “undervote”. In other words, they did not vote for any of the three candidates on the ballot, nor did they vote for the only declared write-in candidate in the race, Democrat Louise Stewardson.
The Orange County Registrar of Voters, in this interview, was asked why a voter would go to all the trouble to vote in an election with only one race on the ballot, and not vote for any of the official candidates. The response is that most of these voters wanted to vote for a Democrat, but they didn’t know the name of the only declared write-in Democratic candidate. Probably most of these undervotes are from voters who cast a write-in for someone who wasn’t a declared write-in candidate.
So far, the election returns for this race are: Republican John Moorlach 36,393; Republican Donald Wagner 31,870; Republican Naz Namazi 2,490. There is no tally yet for the number of write-ins for Louise Stewardson. Until the Stewardson write-in total is known, it is difficult to predict if Moorlach got as many as 50% of the total valid votes cast. If he didn’t, there will be a run-off. Thanks to AroundtheCapitol for the link.
The 18th U.S. House district in Illinois will soon be vacant. See this story, which says that a special election must be held in July, if not before. Under a 2013 U.S. District Court decision, Jones v McGuffage, Illinois cannot require independent candidates, or the nominees of unqualified parties, to complete a petition of 5% of the last vote cast in special U.S. House elections.
