On October 27, Steve Collett, 58, of Hermosa Beach, California, died unexpectedly, apparently of bacterial pneumonia. In 2012 he had been the Libertarian Party’s best-funded congressional candidate. He raised $212,989 and spent $187,077, according to the FEC records, in his campaign for California’s 33rd district. He had been planning to make another run in 2014 for the same office.

Here is a news story about him; there will probably be others soon.

Collett’s 2012 race was against incumbent Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, and Republican-turned-independent Bill Bloomfield, and several other candidates. Waxman and Bloomfield placed first and second in the June 2012 primary. Bloomfield spent $1,214,976 in the race. Under California’s top-two system, Collett was barred from the November election and couldn’t even be a write-in candidate because the 2012 session of the legislature had abolished write-in space in general elections for Congress and partisan state office. Thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.

Jonathan T. Soros has this interesting analysis of the causes of partisanship in the United States. He discusses gerrymandering, top-two primaries, and Instant-Runoff voting. Soros is a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a co-founder of Friends of Democracy, a PAC that attempts to counter the influence of large amounts of money in campaigns. He is a son of George Soros. Here is a piece he and Mark Schmitt wrote earlier this year about the idea that the right to vote should be explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

This story discusses the recent vacancy in Florida’s U.S. House seat, District 13. According to the story, the Florida Governor has no legal limit on how long he can take to set the date of a special election, and no dates for a special election have been set yet.