At the November 5, 2013 election, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, gave the independent candidates their own straight-ticket device, and considered every candidate with that label to be the nominee of the Independent Party. This policy continues to generate discussion; see this lengthy article about the matter.
On November 5, eleven Colorado counties voted on whether they should leave Colorado. Five of the eleven counties voted “Yes”. See this story.
The New York Daily News, which has long been hostile to the Independence Party of New York, has this story about the party’s showing in the New York city mayoral race of November 5, 2013. The Independence Party’s candidate, Adolfo Carrion, placed third in the race, but the story focuses on the fact that he only got eight-tenths of 1% of the total vote.
At this point no one knows how many votes were cast on the Working Families line for the Democratic Mayoral nominee, and no one knows how many votes were cast on the Conservative Party’s line for the Republican nominee. New York election officials do not release any vote totals until the results are complete and official. Therefore, all election returns on election night are from the media, and New York media never bother to get the votes cast on each party line when they do the election night report.
Therefore, it is difficult to completely analyze the Independence Party’s showing, because the election returns for some of the other ballot-qualified parties in the Mayoral race aren’t known yet. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link.
The November 9 Cleveland Plain Dealer has this editorial, criticizing the legislature for having removed the Constitution, Green, Libertarian, and Socialist Parties from the 2014 ballot. This is the second time that newspaper has expressed this view.
John Marshall, of Hot Springs, Montana, has filed a proposed statewide constitutional amendment initiative. It would mandate that when legislators are elected, half the seats would be for females, and half for males. Presumably this could be achieved if each district were to elect two legislators. Because it is a proposed state Constitutional amendment, it seems likely that it would be constitutional. It would not violate the U.S. Constitution, because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there is no fundamental right for an individual to be a candidate for state or local office.
Here is an article about the proposal. As the article notes, the author of the initiative was a Libertarian Party nominee for State Senate in 2012. He polled 7.64% in a race with both major parties also in the race. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.
