Longest-Serving Republican in Congress Dies: Bill Young of Florida

Posted on by October 19, 2013
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On October 18, Congressman Bill Young, of Florida’s 13th district, died. He was the longest-serving Republican member of Congress. He had first been elected to Congress in 1970. See this story. On October 16, 2013, he had been the only Republican member of the U.S. House who did not cast a vote on HR 2775, the bill that re-opened the federal government. He was hospitalized at the time.

Now there will be a special election. The 13th district includes most of Pinellas County, the county that contains St. Petersburg.

In his 42 years of being elected to Congress, no independent or minor party candidate ever ran against him, except in 2000, when the Natural Law Party ran Josette Green and an independent, Randy Heime, ran. The vote was: Young 146,799; Green 26,908; Heine 20,296. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

The Atlantic Carries Interview with Retiring Texas Supreme Court Justice on Why Partisan Judicial Elections are Poor Policy

Posted on by October 19, 2013
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The Atlantic has this interesting interview with Wallace Jefferson, who is newly retired from the Texas Supreme Court. Jefferson explains why Texas partisan judicial elections are a bad idea. He focuses on the fact that populous counties elect dozens of judges, at all levels. Then he notes the existence of the straight-ticket device, which operates to sweep judges out of office even when the voters aren’t paying any attention to the particular judicial races at all. Thanks to How Appealing for the link.

Ohio Files Brief in Defense of its Ban on Out-of-State Circulators

Posted on by October 19, 2013
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On October 18, the Ohio Attorney General’s office filed a brief in support of Ohio’s ban on out-of-state circulators, in Citizens in Charge v Husted, 2:13cv-935, s.d. The state says that the ban is needed because it has a short time frame in which to check the validity of petitions, and if it needs to subpoena circulators, if the circulator is out-of-state, that process would take a long time.

This is illogical for several reasons. The most important is that Ohio doesn’t need to subpoena circulators, whether in-state or out-of-state, to check the validity of petition signatures. Furthermore, Ohio law already permits out-of-state circulators to work on independent presidential candidate petitions, and the state’s brief doesn’t explain how Ohio copes with checking that type of petition.

Also, the brief hints that out-of-state circulators who work on initiative petitions are interfering with the ability of Ohio residents to decide their own policies without outside interference. And the brief says there is a reasonable chance that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Virginia’s pending appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court on a similar issue. Of course, even if the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear that case, it would not be decided until mid-2014, and in the meantime, the Ohio plaintiff that is trying to circulate an initiative petition would not have the benefit of a decision for the next nine months, and would not be able to qualify its initiative for the 2014 ballot unless it used only in-state circulators.