On Monday, September 17, new briefs were filed in Republican Party of Connecticut v Merrill, the case over which party should be listed first on the ballot. See this story. It seems somewhat likely that a decision will be released by the Connecticut Supreme Court today.
On September 19, the California Poll released the results of its recent presidential poll. The results are: President Obama 58%, Mitt Romney 34%, other 2%, undecided 6%.
The pollster read this question to respondents: “If the presidential election were being held today would you vote for the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden or the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?” This wording, of course, suggests that they are the only candidates. The “other” percentage might have been higher if the poll question had been different. To see the poll wording, scroll down to the bottom of the report.
The poll also suggests that independent voters are far more likely to have responded “other” than any other type of voters. Only 3% of registered Democrats are supporting “other” or are undecided; only 8% of registered Republicans are in those category; but 16% of the voters registered outside the two major parties chose one of those two categories.
The New York Times story has this story about the difficult-to-read ballots used earlier this month in the primary. There are many huge deficiencies with the design of New York state ballots, but this story only covers the tiny print size used to print the names of candidates. Problems not mentioned in the article are features that deprive some political parties of their own party column, and instead squeeze two parties into the same column, even when there is lots of room to avoid doing that. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on HB 5912 on Wednesday, September 19. This is a bill to end public funding for the national conventions of political parties. A similar bill already passed the U.S. Senate earlier this year. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for this news.
On September 17, Ralph Nader and the Center for Competitive Democracy filed this amicus brief, in Field v Bowen. The issue is whether the six plaintiffs who challenged certain parts of California’s top-two open primary law should be required to pay almost $250,000 in attorneys fees to supporters of the top-two system who had intervened in the case.