On February 18, the Oklahoma House Elections & Ethics Committee passed HB 2181 by a vote of 7-0. The bill lowers the petition for a newly-qualifying party from 5% of the last vote cast, to 1%.
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The Washington Secretary of State, Kim Wyman, is trying to persuade the legislature to pass SB 5978. See this story. The bill moves the presidential primary from May to the second Tuesday in March. It also requires the major parties to reveal by November of the year before the election whether they will make use of their presidential primaries, or whether caucuses will choose delegates. Although the presidential primary law has been in the books for several decades, the state didn’t hold presidential primaries in 2012 because both major parties used caucuses instead.
SB 5978 also provides that voters would need to declare a party preference in order to vote in a presidential primary.
The Oregon Secretary of State is backing HB 2177, which provides that every adult citizen known to the Motor Vehicle office, who is not already registered to vote, will get a letter saying the individual will be automatically registered to vote unless the individual responds that he or she doesn’t wish to be registered to vote. The letter will also give such individuals a chance to choose a party affiliation. Individuals who don’t respond will then be automatically registered as independent voters.
North Dakota doesn’t have voter registration, so in a sense North Dakota already has this policy. But aside from North Dakota, if the bill passes, Oregon will be the first state in which individuals don’t need to do anything at all to become registered, as long as they already have a drivers license or a state ID card.
Maryland Delegate David Moon (D-Montgomery County) has introduced HB 626. It lowers the number of registered voters needed for a party to remain ballot-qualified from 1% of the state total (about 40,000 members) to exactly 10,000 members. If the bill were to pass, the Libertarian and Green Parties would probably remain on the ballot indefinitely, instead of having to re-petition every four years.
Even though the Libertarian Party got over 1% of the gubernatorial vote in November 2014, that only puts it on the ballot for 2016. Then, in 2016, if it doesn’t poll as much as 1% for president, it would go off the ballot, unless the party meets the registration test, which the bill would ease. Thanks to Brian Bittner for this news.
On February 17, U.S. District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein ruled that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo must call a special election to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 11th district. Rossito-Canty v Cuomo, e.d., 15-cv-568. The seat has been vacant since January 5. Even after the Governor sets a date for a special election, the election itself won’t be for 70 to 80 days, according to New York law.
The decision says the Governor must either set the date by Friday, February 20, or justify his refusal to do so. A hearing will be held on February 20, and if the Governor hasn’t set the date, and hasn’t given a strong reason for not setting the date yet, the Judge will set the date.
The decision is 42 pages long and mentions three harms to the nation if the seat is not filled soon: (1) the inhabitants of that district won’t have any voting power in the U.S. House; (2) the inhabitants of that district won’t have access to the constituent and ombudsman services that all U.S. House members provide to constituents; (3) the nation as a whole will lose input from the member from that district.
The decision points out that the Declaration of Independence itself justified the war of independence partly by complaining that King George III “has dissolved representative houses (colonial legislatures) repeatedly…(and) he has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.”
The decision collected the laws of all 50 states on time limits on governors to call special U.S. House elections. This research shows that in most states, Governors must act within a particular number of days. New York is one of the minority of states that doesn’t specify how soon a Governor must act. Thanks to Frank Morano for this news.