The West Virginia State Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on January 11 in the lawsuit over whether the state must hold a special gubernatorial election this year. See this story.
Reply
The group that monitors elections for the Helsinki Accords has issued a report on the 2010 election in the United States. See it here. It includes 27 pages of text. International human rights observers tend to notice deficiencies in U.S. ballot access laws during presidential election years, but they tend to miss it in mid-term years. The report says nothing about ballot access laws. However, it criticizes the U.S. for failing to give voting representatives in Congress to citizens who live in the District of Columbia and the overseas possessions. It also criticizes the U.S. for disenfranchising felons in almost all states, and ex-felons in many states. And, it criticizes the many instancees when minor party and independent candidates were excluded from general election debates. Thanks to law professor Jurij Toplak of Slovenia for the link.
Last month, Americans Elect Party submitted approximately 21,000 signatures to qualify as a party in Nevada. This is three times as many signatures as are legally required. By January 7, the Secretary of State will probably have determined that the petition has enough valid signatures.
On January 3, California Assemblymember Paul Fong, chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, introduced AB 80. It moves the presidential primary from February to June.
On January 4, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the Federal Election Commission a 30-day delay in filing a response in Cao v FEC, 10-776. This is the case in which the national Republican Party and one of its past congressional nominees challenge part of the McCain-Feingold law. The case concerns the spending limit on political party speech, if that speech mentions one of the party’s congressional nominees and in which that speech is coordinated with the nominee.
The FEC’s response is now due on February 11. The Court has not yet decided whether to hear this case.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that let the voters of each U.S. House district choose their own presidential elector. In 2008, one of Nebraska’s U.S. House districts chose a Democratic elector, so the electoral college vote in 2008 for Nebraska was split between Barack Obama (who got one vote) and John McCain (who got two electors from each of the other two districts, plus the two at-large electors).
This newspaper story predicts that the Nebraska legislature may abolish that system, and make the state winner-take-all. The Nebraska legislature convenes on January 5 and there is no such bill yet. A similar bill was introduced in 2009, but it didn’t pass. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link. Although Nebraska’s legislature is elected on a non-partisan basis, a large majority of the state legislators are registered Republicans.