Steven St. John, an independent candidate for U.S. House in Nevada’s Third District, says if elected, he will arrange to let registered voters in the district vote tell him how to vote, on certain important issues. See this story for more details.
This In These Times story describes the January 22 meeting of the Chicago Socialist Campaign, a new coalition with the goal of electing a socialist to the Chicago Board of Alderman in February 2015. Chicago city elections are non-partisan. Thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.
Ballot Access News
January 1, 2014 – Volume 29, Number 8
| This issue was printed on yellow paper. |
Table of Contents
On May 22-25, 2014, voters in the countries that are part of the European Commission elect a new European Commission Parliament. Afterwards, the European Parliament will elect a President of the European Commission. Ordinary voters in Europe do not vote directly for president of the European Commission.
Nevertheless, five European parties are choosing a proposed president, in advance of the voting for Parliament, so that voters will have a sense of which presidential candidate these particular parties prefer. The five parties that are doing this are: European People’s Convention (which is a coalition of Europe’s center-right parties), the Party of European Socialists, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, the Party of the European Left, and the Green Party. Here is a wikipedia article about the 2014 European election.
Among these five parties, only the Green Party is holding a European-wide “presidential primary.” The vote is being conducted on the internet and any citizen of a nation within the European Union who is at least age 16 may participate. There are four Greens running, and the primary will choose two of them, to guarantee that at least one woman is in the running. They four Greens running are Jose Bove of France, Monica Frassoni of Italy, Rebecca Harms of Germany, and Ska Keller of Germany. For more about the Green presidential primary, see greenprimary.europeangreens.eu.
New York state election law says independent candidate petitions are due 77 days before the general election. See section 6-158.9 of the Election Law. Nevertheless, for 2014, the State Board of Elections has set a petition deadline for U.S. House petitions that is two weeks earlier than the statutory deadline. See the Board’s calendar here.
Therefore, the U.S. House petitions will be due August 5. Other independent petitions are due August 19. New York has no U.S. Senate election in 2014.
All of this may change, if the legislature passes any bill to move primary dates. Currently, congressional primaries in 2014 will be on June 24 but primaries for other office are in September. This is confusing and wasteful. But it is difficult for any bill to get through the legislature changing these dates, because the Assembly prefers a June primary for everything, and the Senate prefers an August primary for everything. The reason there are different primary dates now for Congress versus other office is that the federal government sued New York to force it to hold a congressional primary earlier than the statutory September date. But the federal government has no authority to tell the state when to hold its primary for non-congressional office.
