On October 16, both houses of Congress voted on HB 2775, the bill to re-open the federal government. Republicans who voted on the bill include 231 in the U.S. House and 45 in the U.S. Senate, totaling 276 Republican votes on the bill.

Among those 276 Republicans who voted on the bill, 135 were from states with open Republican primaries, 39 from states with semi-closed Republican primaries, 24 from states with a top-two primary, and 78 from states with closed Republican primaries. “Semi-closed” means that independents were permitted to vote in any party’s primary, although sometimes they had to join that party at the primary polling place immediately prior to voting.

Among the open primary states, 43 Republicans voted in favor of HR 2775, which was only 31.9% of all Republicans from those states who voted on the bill.

Among the semi-closed primary states, 23 Republicans voted “yes”, which was 59.0% of all Republicans from those states who voted on the bill.

Among the top-two primary states, 13 Republicans voted “yes”, which was 54.2% of all Republicans from those states who voted on the bill.

Finally, among the closed primary states, 35 Republicans voted “yes”, which was 44.9% of all Republicans from those states who voted on the bill.

States with open Republican primaries are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. States with semi-closed Republican primaries are Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. States with top-two primaries are California, Louisiana, and Washington. States with closed Republican primaries are Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota. The states not named have no Republicans in Congress: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

On October 17, the Virginia Libertarian Party filed this brief with the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is Libertarian Party of Virginia v Judd, 13-231. The issue is Virginia’s ban on out-of-state petitioners. The state wants the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the law. The party’s brief argues that the lower courts were correct to invalidate the law.

The next step is that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to hear Virginia’s appeal. If the Court declines, then the case is over and the state can no longer enforce the ban.

The New York City Board of Elections has announced that the ballot for New York city’s election on November 5, 2013, will be printed in six-point type. This means that most voters will be required to use a magnifying glass. Ordinary newspaper print is ten-point type. See this story.

Part of the reason is that there are fifteen candidates for Mayor, and some of them have multiple listings on the ballot, so that twenty spaces are needed for the mayoral race. However, there have been many jurisdictions that had races with more candidates than that for a single office, that did not use tiny print. Many New Hampshire presidential primaries have had more candidates: 1992 Democratic had 36, 2012 Republican had 30, 1988 Democratic had 25, 1992 Republican had 25, 2004 Democratic had 23, 1984 Democratic had 22, 1996 Republican had 22, 1996 Democratic had 21, 2008 Democratic had 21, 2008 Republican had 21. New Hampshire ballots didn’t use tiny print.

The story mentions that part of the problem is New York state’s law that does not give flexibility to election administrators, and part of the problem is that everything must be printed in five languages. If New York city used paper ballots, it could print different ballots for each language. If it used touch-screen ballots, the touch-screen could be programmed to let a voter choose the desired language. But because New York city is using old-fashioned mechanical voting machines, those options aren’t available. Thanks to Steve Urbano for the link.