Ken Broder has this commentary about the January 29, 2015 decision in Rubin v Padilla at All Gov. Rubin v Padilla is the case concerning California’s top-two system.
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On February 2, the United Independent Party announced it is launching its voter registration drive. The party will retain its ballot-qualified status into the indefinite future if it persuades 1% of the registered voters to join. The party is fortunate that the Massachusetts voter registration form has been re-issued, listing both the United Independent Party and the Green-Rainbow Party as choices with their own checkbox, along with the Democratic and Republican Parties, of course. Here is a link to the new voter registration form. The old form only listed the Democratic and Republican Parties, because they were the only qualified parties between November 2012 and November 2014. The Libertarian Party last appeared on the form in November 2010.
The Oregon January 2015 registration tally shows that the Independent Party has 109,349 registered members. Oregon law says a party with 5% of the statewide registration is entitled to its own government-administered primary. The calculation uses a denominator from the statewide total at the most recent gubernatorial election. The November 2014 statewide registration was 2,174,763, so the Independent Party now has five more voters than 5% of that denominator.
It is not certain that the Independent Party is thereby guaranteed a government primary in 2016, because conceivably it could lose registrations between now and the 2016 cutoff point. But because the party has been steadily growing, it is very likely that, having met the 5%, it will keep it and even increase its percentage. Thanks to Sal Peralta for this news.
The Oregon January 2015 registration tally is not yet on the Secretary of State’s web page.
On December 5, 2014, a Massachusetts PAC filed a federal lawsuit against a 1946 Massachusetts law that says, “No person shall make or publish, or cause to be made or published, any false statement in relation to any candidate for nomination or election to public office, which is designed to or tends to aid or to injure or defeat such candidate.” This law is in Mass. General Laws, chapter 56, section 42, part of the election code.
The case is Jobs First Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee v Coakley, 1:14cv-14338. It has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton. The Massachusetts law is similar to an Ohio law invalidated in September 2014 in U.S. District Court. That case was Susan B. Anthony List v Driehaus.
On January 29, the Mississippi House Apportionment & Elections Committee passed HB 933. It moves the primary for president and all other office, in presidential years, from the second Tuesday in March, to the first Tuesday in March. For 2016, that would mean a primary date of March 1, the earliest date that any state is permitted to hold a presidential primary (except for New Hampshire and South Carolina). Thanks to Josh Putnam for this news.