On January 8, Oklahoma Representative Mike Brown (D-Tahlequah) introduced a bill to provide for recall of state and local office-holders. It is HB 1008. Oddly enough, it is just a statute, not a proposed constitutional amendment. Generally recall is something that appears within state constitutions, in states that have the recall. Thanks to E. Zachery Knight for this news.
On January 8, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 4th district. All precincts have reported, although not all provisional and absentee ballots have been counted. So far, the vote total is: Republican Jim Nielsen 87,669; Democrat Michael Harrington 43,866. No one else appeared on the ballot, and write-ins are not allowed. Those two vote totals add up to only 131,535. Yet the district had 532,036 registered voters as of the late October 2012 tally.
Poor turnout is normal for special elections held in isolation from other important elections.
The Wyoming legislature convened on January 8. According to this news story, the President of the Wyoming Senate, Tony Ross (R-Cheyenne) addressed the Senate with a speech, and in that speech he “deplored the emergence of fringe parties with extreme agendas that have an attack-only strategy.”
The parties with candidates on the ballot in Wyoming last year were Republican, Democratic, Libertarian (all of which are long-established in Wyoming), and two parties that appeared on the ballot for the first time, the Constitution Party and the Country Party.
As the story points out, the Wyoming Senate now consists of 26 Republicans and 4 Democrats. Thanks to Don Wills for the link.
One Ohio state legislature race is still not decided. After a recount, the Republican incumbent leads by five votes over the Democratic challenger, but the Ohio State Supreme Court has accepted the challenger’s lawsuit, which concerns a few dozen disputed ballots. See this story. The case is O’Farrell v Landis, 2012-2151. The Court’s schedule for all evidence to be gathered puts resolution into the second half of February.
The Post-Star of Glens Falls, New York, has this interesting article about all the reasons it will be difficult for New York state to begin permitting early voting. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
