This story explains that the New York city Board of Elections recently found 1,579 ballots from November 2012 that had never before been counted. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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On June 18, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed HB 341. It is an omnibus election law bill. Among other things, it moves the deadline for an independent presidential candidate to file his or her slate of presidential electors from early September, to the first Friday after the third Tuesday of August. Here is a link to the text of the new law. See section 1253.
Surprisingly, the bill also establishes the same deadline for qualified parties. This bill seems to force the Democratic and Republican Parties to hold their national conventions no later than the third week in August. In 2004 and 2008, the Republican Party didn’t nominate its presidential and vice-presidential candidates until early September. In 2012, the Republicans didn’t nominate until August 29, and the Democrats didn’t nominate until September 5.
The Topeka Capital-Journal has this story about Aaron Estabrook, who is trying to establish the Moderate Party in Kansas. The article seems to suggest that the group is not confident of completing the petition requirement for party status, because it says the party founder is also thinking of doing an independent petition for U.S. Senate in 2014. The independent petition for statewide office is 5,000 signatures; the party petition is 16,776 signatures (2% of the last gubernatorial vote).
This New York Times story explains the difficulty of collecting signatures for Republican primary candidates in New York city. With only 470,000 registered Republicans in the city, even mainstream Republicans have difficulty collecting 3,750 valid signatures of party members. As the story says, normal petitioning on the street barely works, and petitioners find they must first get a list of registered Republicans and then try to find them at home.
This is why the new legislation in Arizona, HB 3605, is so devastating to Arizona’s minor parties. The bill requires over 5,500 signatures of party members (or registered independents) and the Green Party only has about 6,000 registered members in the state.
Nine members of the Washington, D.C., city council are sponsoring B20-0120. It is a bill for public funding of candidates for elective city office. Candidates would qualify for public funding if they raise at least $5,000 from at least 50 donors. For purpose of qualifying for public funding, amounts above $100 from any particular donor don’t count.
Candidates who qualify promise to appear in at least two candidate debates. Qualifying candidates receive public funding equal to four times the amount they received in qualifying private donations.
The bill does not discriminate for or against any candidate on the basis of the candidate’s partisan affiliation or independent status. It thus resembles the Arizona and Maine public funding systems, but is unlike the discriminatory system used in Connecticut.
The bill has a Public Roundtable hearing on July 11. It was introduced on February 5.