On February 15, the Virginia legislature passed HB 2147. It requires parties that nominate by primary to check the validity of petitions, when candidates file to appear on a party primary ballot. In Virginia, primary candidates file their petitions with their party, not with government election officials. In the past, sometimes the major parties simply assumed petitions were valid if they contained more than the required number of signatures.
On February 23, the Michigan Republican Party state convention endorsed a proposed bill to let each U.S. House district choose its own presidential elector. The vote was 1,370-132. See this story. The proposed bill doesn’t exist yet, but Representative Pete Lund (R-Shelby Township) will probably now introduce it.
The newspaper story says Michigan has been using the at-large system to elect presidential electors for 175 years, but that is not correct. In 1891 the Michigan legislature passed a bill to let each U.S. House district choose its own presidential elector. That was in place for the 1892 presidential election, but afterwards the state gave up the plan. The result in 1892 was that Republican presidential nominee Benjamin Harrison received 9 electoral votes in Michigan, and Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland won 5 electoral votes. If the district plan had not been in effect, Harrison would have won all Michigan’s electoral votes. However, the Michigan system did not change the identity of the winner; Cleveland beat Harrison overwhelmingly in the electoral college, 277 to 145, so he didn’t need his 5 electoral votes from Michigan. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Three Republican and four Democratic Arizona state representatives have introduced HB 2575, which makes many small changes to the public funding program for candidates for state office. Among the many changes is a revision of how independent candidates are treated in the primary season. Under current law, independent candidates can only receive 70% as much public funding as candidates running in a party primary, during primary season. The bill would delete the reference to 70%, so that if the bill passes, independent candidates would receive must as much public funding during primary season as any other candidates.
Ballot Access News
February 1, 2013 – Volume 28, Number 9
| This issue was printed on white paper. |
Table of Contents
The Federal Election Commission web page has these November 2012 official election returns by state, for all candidates for President. The FEC did a good job, but appears to have missed the write-ins reported by the West Virginia Secretary of State, which were: Virgil Goode 119, Roseanne Barr 31, Rocky Anderson 12, Merlin Miller 11, Tom Hoefling 5, Richard Duncan 1.
