The News Virginian, daily newspaper for Waynesboro, Virginia, has this editorial about primaries. The editorial says they should either be closed, or they should be eliminated so that all candidates would run in November.
3
Four Michigan State Representatives have introduced HB 4310. It provides that each U.S. House district would elect its own presidential elector. The bill’s authors apparently forgot that Michigan has procedures for independent presidential candidates to get on the ballot, and procedures for write-ins as well. The bill only refers to party nominees for presidential elector. Here is a link to the bill.
The four sponsors are Cindy Gamrat, Todd Courser, Thomas Hooker, and Gary Glenn. Michigan used the system of letting each district choose its own presidential elector in the 1892 election.
On March 3, the Pennsylvania Prohibition Party made a donation of $3,678 to the Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition. The money is to be used to help the effort to pass SB 495, the bill to improve ballot access for minor parties and independent candidates. Thanks to Jim Hedges for this news.
On March 5, the Arkansas Supreme Court invalidated two restrictions on initiative petitions, but upheld some other restrictions. All of the restrictions challenged in the lawsuit had been passed in 2013. The case is McDaniel v Spencer, cv-14-599. Here is the 28-page decision.
The restrictions struck down are: (1) the law that says after the petition is filed, the organization sponsoring the petition cannot collect any more signatures until election officials finish counting how many signatures in the first batch are valid; (2) the law that says if a petition sheet has signatures of residents of more than one county, then the entire sheet is invalid.
The restrictions upheld are: (1) a requirement that each signer include his or her date of birth on the petition; (2) extensive record-keeping for initiative proponents who use paid circulators; (3) a requirement that each paid circulator submit a picture that is less than 3 months old; (4) a ban on paid circulators previously convicted of certain crimes; (5) the law that if any signer is “disabled” and therefore can’t fill in all the blanks on the petition, the circulator who helps fill in some blanks must sign and print his or her name on the margin of the petition next to the signature of the assisted signer; (6) the law that all paid circulators must reveal their current residence address as well as their permanent address.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has seven members. Three justices would have invalidated all the challenged laws; two justices would have upheld all the challenged laws; only the remaining two justices agree with the entire decision that some laws are valid and others are invalid.
On March 3, a subcommittee of the Iowa House Government Committee passed HF 4 by a vote of 2-1. This is the bill that abolishes the straight-ticket device.