According to this story, U.S. Senator Rand Paul has told the Republican leader of the Kentucky State Senate not to bother introducing a bill in the 2015 session that would allow someone to run for President or Vice-President, and another office, simultaneously.
The Mayor of Harvey, Illinois, Eric Kellogg, is being told he can’t have his name on the city ballot as a candidate for re-election unless he pays old campaign finance fines. See this story. Harvey is in Cook County and has a population of 25,000. The problem with keeping a candidate off the ballot for misdeeds is that the voters are being denied their ability to elect the candidate of their choice.
According to this post at Frontloading.com, the Nebraska Democratic Party recently decided not to use the May 2016 presidential primary to choose delegates to the Democratic national convention. The Nebraska Democrats didn’t use the primary for this purpose in 2012 or 2008 either. Democrats consider the May presidential primary too late in the season to be useful.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has released this data for the November 4, 2014 election. It shows the turnout rates by party, age, and race.
Registered Republicans had a turnout of 50.5%; registered Democrats were 46.1%; registered independents 35.1%; registered Libertarians 28.4%. North Carolina does not report how many voters register into unqualified parties, although such voters exist, because the voter registration form has a blank line for “party”.
The most shocking data concerns age. Voters age 66 and above voted at a 63.3% rate, but voters 18-25 had a 17.8% rate.
According to this story, the Connecticut Republican Party has created a committee to evaluate whether to again let independent voters vote in Republican primaries. The committee will also discuss whether to try to persuade the legislature to move Connecticut’s presidential primary from April to March. And the committee will discuss whether to eliminate state party endorsement conventions (for office other than president).
