The South Dakota Senate Local Government Committee will hear HB 1018 on Friday, February 22, at 7:45 a.m. This is the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bill, and it has already passed the House. Among other things, it would let a ballot-qualified party cease to be ballot-qualified if the state chair of the party wishes. This provision has been included in the bill to give Americans Elect a chance to avoid being on the ballot in 2014.
A team of political scientists at the University of Illinois in Chicago, headed by Professor Dick Simpson, has studied crime statistics and has determined that in the period starting in 1976, Louisiana has had the most political corruption of any state, on a per capita basis. The study also finds that Chicago has the most corruption of any large city. Here is the 15-page report.
Most of the news about this study focuses on Chicago, but the reference to Louisiana is on the fourth page.
Louisiana has used the top-two system for state and local office starting in 1975, and has used it for Congress 1978-2006 and also again starting in 2012. Chicago has used non-partisan elections for Alderman starting in 1920, and has used non-partisan elections for the three citywide elected executive posts starting in 1999. “Top-two system” is defined as a system in which party labels appear on the ballot, but parties do not actually nominate candidates. There are different kinds of top-two systems. Fans of top-two systems sometimes argue that the Nebraska legislature is elected in a top-two system, but Nebraska legislative races do not have party labels on the ballot and most neutral commenters never list Nebraska in connection with top-two systems.
IndependentVoting, a nationwide organization headquartered in New York city, has been advocating for top-two systems for almost a decade. IndependentVoting also advocates for non-partisan elections. One wishes that IndependentVoting (whose leaders are quite influential in New York city mayoral politics, due to their control over the Independence Party’s nominations process) would acknowledge this study, and would explain why they seem to feel that Chicago is better governed than New York city. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Virginia holds its gubernatorial election on November 5, 2013. It is assumed that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will be the Republican nominee and that Terry McAuliffe, former chair of the Democratic national committee, will be the Democratic nominee. The state’s Lieutenant Governor, Bill Bolling, elected as a Republican in 2009, has hinted he will be an independent “centrist” candidate for Governor this year.
This Quinnipiac University Poll shows that if all three candidates are on the ballot, the entry of Bolling into the race is not necessarily harmful to the Republican Party’s chances of winning the race. When Bolling is left out of the poll, the results are tied: Cuccinelli 38%; McAuliffe 38%. When Bolling is included, the results are still too close to predict the winner: Cuccinelli 31%, McAuliffe 34%, Bolling 13%.
Cuccinelli has called for ballot access reform this year, which is occurring in the legislature. McAuliffe, on the other hand, is somewhat well-known for being the architect of national Democratic Party efforts in 2004 to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot in as many states as possible. Conceivably that could be a campaign issue in Virginia this year, especially since a trial in Maine over McAuliffe did in 2004 will probably occur this year. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link to the poll.
On February 20, the Oklahoma House Rules Committee passed HB 2134. The vote was 7-0 and the Committee did not amend the bill. The bill lowers the number of signatures for a newly-qualifying party to exactly 5,000 signatures.
Two years ago, the same Committee also passed a similar bill (HB 1058), but first amended it to raise it to 22,500 signatures. Thus, it appears the Oklahoma House is more in favor of ballot access reform now than it was two years ago. Two years ago, the House passed the bill at 22,500, probably thinking the Senate would see that as a compromise between 5,000 and 5% of the last vote cast. But the Senate spurned the compromise and refused to pass any bill other than 5% of the last gubernatorial vote. Thanks to E. Zachary Knight for this news.
On February 18, Don Shaffer died. He had been a founder of the New Party in 1992, and also a founder of the Working Families Party in 1997. See this article in The Nation, written by Dan Cantor.
