On December 2, independent candidate James Hall filed this 62-page brief in the Eleventh Circuit, in Hall v Bennett, 13-15214. The issue is whether petition requirements must be relaxed in a special election, when the petitioning period is so much shorter. The election is to fill the vacant U.S. House Seat, First District of Alabama.
On November 26, Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick signed HB 3764, which moves the 2014 primary date from September 16 to September 9. The bill only applies to 2014, so under current law, primaries in years beyond 2014 continue to be seven weeks before the general election, which would have been September 16 in 2014 if HB 3764 hadn’t passed.
The legislature created HB 3764 on November 18. The House passed it the same day and the Senate passed it the next day. Until the bill passed, Massachusetts had been scheduled to have the latest primary of 2014. But now, it is merely tied with Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island for having the nation’s last 2014 primary. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.
The Constitution Party has been petitioning for ballot status in the upcoming special election, State House district 31. In this district, 512 valid signatures are needed for independent candidates and for unqualified parties. Normally Alabama checks petitions on a flow basis, so that petitioning groups can tell how they are doing, and how many more they need. But now, the Secretary of State refuses to check any of the party’s petitions until after the deadline, so the party doesn’t have the benefit of knowing how many more signatures it needs.
The party has collected 675 signatures and is working to collect more. The deadline is 4 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3. That is also the date of the Republican primary. No Democrat filed, so this will be a one-candidate election if the party’s petition does not succeed, because no one else is petitioning. The 31st district is in Elmore and Coosa Counties.
Because there are four Republicans running in the primary tomorrow, probably no one will get a majority and there will be a run-off primary on January 28, 2014. In that case, the election itself will be in March 2014.
Congress has long made it illegal for public broadcasting stations to sell advertising. On December 2, an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit overruled a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, and upheld the federal law. The case had been brought by a public television station that wants to sell advertising, including issue advertising and also advertising by candidates. Here is the opinion. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
The Independent Voter Project of California, one of the groups that intervened in every court case challenging any detail of California’s top-two system, is somewhat well-known for hosting annual weekly meetings for some California legislators. The most recent such event was last month. John Hrabe has an article about the meeting at Calnewsroom, an on-line source for news about California politics and government.
The focus of John Hrabe’s article is that the Independent Voter Project refuses to identify the state legislators who attend its event, which is held at the Fairmont Kea Lani, one of Hawaii’s most luxurious resorts. Hrabe’s article also links to other news stories on the same subject. UPDATE: see this December 4 article, in which two Democratic State Senators voluntarily revealed that they had attended the session.
