Think Progress has this story about the Maine initiative for instant-runoff voting for all federal and state office (except President). The article is by Scott Keyes. Think Progress is one of the most prominent politics blogs, and has existed since 2005. It was founded to carry news about climate change and government response to climate change. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
Lisa Madigan, Illinois Attorney General, agrees that incoming Governor Bruce Rauner has the authority to appoint a new State Comptroller to replace Judy Baar Topinka, who died this month, shortly after being re-elected. But the Attorney General also advocates that the legislature change the law, to provide that the gubernatorial appointment only be good until the November 2016 election. Comptroller is a four-year office, so if the law is not changed, the person appointed soon will serve the entire four years even though that person had not been elected. See this story.
The Hill, which covers Congress in depth, has this op-ed by Tom Squitieri, “Independent and third-party politicians could ease gridlock.”
Now that all states have reported their official vote totals, it is possible to calculate the vote for each nationally-organized party’s vote for the office at the top of the ballot for November 2014. Top-of-ballot office is defined to mean Governor. If a state didn’t have a gubernatorial election, it is U.S. Senate. For the five states that had neither office up, it is the office actually at the top of the ballot: U.S. House in North Dakota and Washington, Attorney General for Utah, Secretary of State for Indiana, Auditor for Missouri. The calculation also includes the Mayoral vote for Washington, D.C.
Republican: 40,936,511, down 5.9% from the party’s 2010 total of 43,507,666.
Democratic: 36,888,617, down 10.1% from the party’s 2010 total of 41,043,721.
Libertarian: 1,471,172, up 44.9% from the party’s 2010 total of 1,015,009.
Green: 416,383, down 18.1% from the party’s 2010 total of 508,041.
The 2014 Libertarian total is the second highest number of votes ever for a minor party, for a midterm year top-of-the-ballot races. The highest was the 1914 Progressive Party’s total of 1,489,151. The third highest is now the Reform Party’s 1998 total, which was 1,407,005.
The chief reason the Green total declined between 2010 and 2014 is that in 2010, the Green Party was on the ballot for Governor of California, and it polled 129,231 votes. In 2014 the California top-two system kept all minor party candidates off the ballot for Governor.
Maine State Representative Ben Chipman (I-Portland) will introduce a bill in the 2015 session of the legislature, easing the number of signatures needed to get on the primary ballot of a small ballot-qualified party. The bill will probably set the ceiling for primary petitions for statewide and U.S. House office at 1% of the party’s registered membership. In Maine, current law does not permit anyone to sign a primary petition unless the signer is a member of the same party as the candidate. Furthermore, Maine current law does not take into consideration how many members the party has, and requires 2,000 party members to sign for statewide office, and 1,000 for U.S. House.
Massachusetts primary ballot access laws are somewhat similar to Maine’s, and it is hoped that a somewhat similar bill will be introduced in Massachusetts in 2015.
