The Alabama Senate Constitution & Elections Committee will hear SB 265 on March 19. This is the bill to lower the number of signatures needed for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates to get on the ballot. Thanks to Joshua Cassity for this news.
John Wildermuth, politics columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, in this article at Fox & Hounds strongly recommends all-postal elections to help increase voter turnout.
On March 15, the Connecticut Joint Administration and Election Committee passed SB 432 by 9-5. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill.
On March 15, the U.S. Postal Service filed this brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, explaining why the U.S. Supreme Court should not hear the case. The issue whether it is constitutional to ban individuals from signing a petition on interior postal sidewalks. The Postal Service permits circulators to stand on postal sidewalks and ask people to sign, but if the individual wants to sign, the individual and the circulator must then leave postal sidewalks.
The Postal Service argument is almost entirely on the point that there is no split in the various circuits on whether post office interior sidewalks are public fora or not. The brief would have been more interesting if it talked about the issue itself. An average person would conclude that the post office’s policy does not make sense, and there is little in this brief to rebut that, except the argument that the sidewalk would be congested if signing occurred on the sidewalk.
Justia has this interesting analysis of some of the arguments against the National Popular Vote Plan. The piece is authored by law professor Vikram David Amar.
