On January 9, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell delivered his “State of the Commonwealth” speech, and asked the legislature to make restoration of voting rights automatic for ex-felons who have completed their sentence and had not been convicted of a violent crime. See this story. According to the story, The Sentencing Project says there are currently 451,471 ex-felons barred from voting in Virginia. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
On January 9, the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, unanimously ruled in favor of Democratic nominee Cecilia F. Tkaczyk, in the election contest over who won the election for State Senate, 46th district, a district near Albany.
The Republican nominee, George A. Amedore, won the race by 37 votes, but 99 votes were never counted because of procedural errors made by local election officials. The January 9 court ruling said the 99 uncounted votes should be counted. It is still somewhat statistically unlikely that counting 99 more votes will erase a margin of 37 votes, of course. See this story. Both the Republican Judges and the Democratic Judges ruled in favor of counting the disputed ballots.
The original returns, by party, are: Democratic 55,408, Working Families 5,809, Green 1,387. All these votes were cast for Tkaczyk. Votes for Amedore came from these party lines: Republican 51,273, Conservative 8,274, Independence 3,594. It is very rare for the Green Party to ever cross-endorse a major party nominee, but in this case the Green Party did cross-endorse the Democrat.
The Washington Secretary of State has submitted a proposed bill to the legislature, which makes many technical changes. Among them is a clearer definition of “major political party.” Existing law says a “major political party” is on the ballot automatically for President, whereas other parties must submit 1,000 signatures. Existing law also says a “major political party” is one whose nominee for any statewide office at the last election polled at least 5% of the vote.
Because parties in Washington no longer have nominees, except for President and Vice-President, the Libertarian Party last year filed a lawsuit, charging that the Republican Party was no longer a qualified major party after the November 2010 election because it had no nominees for a statewide office in 2010. The only statewide partisan office up in 2010 was U.S. Senate. A lower state court ruled that the Republican Party did have a nominee in 2010, because the state party had endorsed one particular individual, and therefore the Republican Party was still a qualified major party.
The proposed bill re-defines “major political party” to be one that polled 5% for President. When a party meets that vote test, it keeps that status for four years. The bill will probably exist with its own bill number next week.
On December 31, the Pennsylvania Libertarian statewide candidates asked the Commonwealth Court to award $35,500 in court costs. See this nine-page brief, which says that the attorneys for the challengers did nothing wrong, but that other agents of the challengers did unfair actions. The filing discusses the incident in which someone who held himself out as a law enforcement official made allegedly improper communications with some of the circulators.
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.
