The Washington Post has this editorial, suggesting that the District of Columbia choose its officials using Ranked-Choice voting. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel has this article in The Nation, defending fusion. It also misleading says that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to eliminate fusion. However, as one of the commenters points out, Governor Cuomo does not want to end fusion. He just wants to make it possible for any candidate to run in any party’s primary. Thanks to Gene Berkman for the link.
On April 24, the Montana House passed HB 120, the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill. It has two ballot access improvements: (1) it moves the independent candidate petition deadline (for office other than President) from March to May; (2) it makes it clear that the law, barring independent candidates from the ballot if they had too close an association with any political party, doesn’t apply to actions taken outside Montana. This has the effect of freeing independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates to get on the ballot, even if they were associated with a party. The old law was used to bar Peter Camejo from being Ralph Nader’s running mate in Montana in 2004, because Camejo had run for Governor of California as a Green in 2003.
On April 23, the Vermont Supreme Court heard a case concerning the definition of “natural-born citizen” as it applies to presidential qualifications. See this story.
Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who was elected as a Republican in 2009, and who seriously considered running for Governor as an independent this year, now has some feelings of regret that he didn’t run as an independent this year. See this story. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.