On Friday, January 30, the South Dakota Senate put off voting on SB 69, even though it had been placed on the day’s agenda. The bill makes ballot access more difficult both for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates.
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Joe Mathews, who studies California politics and government, here suggests that low turnout in Los Angeles city elections might be increased if the city had partisan elections for city office. Los Angeles, and all California cities and counties, have non-partisan elections for their own officers.
The South Dakota Senate convenes at 1 p.m. on Friday, January 30. On the agenda is SB 69, which makes ballot access worse, both for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates.
This Georgia blog associated with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution mentions HB 58 favorably. HB 58 is the bill to sharply reduce the number of signatures needed for independent and minor party candidates for U.S. House, legislature, and partisan county office. In the past Georgia ballot access bills have been ignored by Georgia’s important news outlets.
The California Secretary of State here lists the parties that invited independent voters to vote in their primaries for the period 2004 through 2012. This proves that before the top-two system was put into effect, independent voters could vote in both the Republican and Democratic primaries for congress and state office.
This Secretary of State’s list only starts with 2004, but both major parties allowed independents to vote in their primaries in 2002 as well. Evidence for this is in “America Votes”, Volume 25, authored by Richard Scammon, Alice McGillivray, and Rhodes Cook, and published by Congressional Quarterly in 2003. Page 61 says, in 2002, “California has a semi-open primary.” It then says, “Voters registered with a recognized party in California could vote only in their party’s primary. Other voters could participate in the primary of the Democratic, Republican, American Independent or Natural Law Parties.”