On November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, 12-96, over whether section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act is still constitutional. Section five is the part of the law that requires certain states and smaller jurisdictions to get approval from the U.S. Justice Department before changing any election law or practice.
The lower court, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., had ruled in favor of section 5.
Art Goodtimes has been re-elected to the San Miguel, Colorado County Commission, a partisan race. The vote was: Goodtimes, Green, 1,746; Dan Chancellor, Democrat, 1,375; Kevin Kall, Republican, 1,000. Goodtimes has been elected as a Green every four years, starting in 1996. No other Green Party nominee has served in a partisan office for such a long time. He was re-elected to the District 3 seat, but the vote for this office is always countywide. Thanks to GreenPartyWatch for this news.
Tom Tryon, a registered Libertarian who was first elected to the Calaveras County, California Board of Supervisors in 1984, and who has also been re-elected ever since, was defeated on November 6, 2012. See this story. This post is non-partisan but Tryon is well-known as a Libertarian.
According to Greg Kaza, the Libertarian Party has again polled over 1,000,000 votes for its nominees for U.S. House across the nation. The party also did this in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2008, and 2010. The Libertarian Party is the only party to have polled over 1,000,000 votes for U.S. House, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, since the Progressive Party last did it in 1914.
Although the 2012 election returns are still only 90% counted, the Libertarian total is approximately 1,200,000 for U.S. House. It is somewhat surprising that the party did so well, since this year, for the first time since 1978, it had no nominees on the California ballot for Congress, due to California’s top-two primary system.
Now that President Obama has said, “We need to fix that” on election night, it is highly likely that Congress will consider many bills to improve election administration in federal elections. Obama was referring to the problem that in some states, voters had to wait in line for hours at polling places in order to vote. Here is a Washington Post article that mentions some ideas for new federal legislation. Article One authorizes Congress to pass laws on administration of congressional elections, and the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted Article One to also include presidential elections. See Oregon v Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970).
I have suggested to my member of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi, that she introduce a bill to provide for some means for independent candidates for Congress who did not run in a primary to be placed directly on the November ballot. Federal ballot access protection for congressional candidates is long overdue. Such a bill would protect voters who are not satisfied with the choices presented by primaries. For example, the proposed bill, if it had been in place this year, would have provided a means for voters such as those who live in California’s 31st U.S. House district to vote for someone in November who is not a Republican. Democrats far outnumber Republicans in that district, and yet this week they were forced to either vote for a conservative Republican, or not to vote at all.
