Marietta, Georgia, is holding a special election on July 31 to fill the Ward One seat on the Board of Education. When filing closed, only Brett C. Bittner had filed to be on the ballot. He is the executive director of the Georgia Libertarian Party.
Marietta is a city of 56,579. It is the county seat and largest city in Cobb County.
The may 30 Santa Cruz Sentinel has this editorial, suggesting that California’s “top-two open primary” system, passed by the voters in June 2010, is not necessarily a helpful idea. The Sentinel endorsed Proposition 14 back in 2010.
Also of interest in this Mother Jones story about the U.S. Senate race in California. The article is one of the few that actually covers this race in any detail. The article describes nine of the 24 candidates in that race.
On May 29, Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch told the press that the Montana independent petition deadline (for candidates running for office other than President) will be May 29. As previously noted, late on Friday, May 25, a U.S. District Court had invalidated the statutory March deadline.
Obviously, for the Secretary of State to set May 29 as the new deadline, the very day that the public became aware of the court decision, makes it impossible for any potential independent candidates to take advantage of the victory in 2012. The March petition deadline had been passed by the 2007 session of the legislature. The law in effect before 2007 said the deadline should be one week before the primary. The Secretary of State feels the proper course of action is to reinstate the deadline that would have been in effect, if the 2007 legislature had not acted. The Secretary of State says the Attorney General agrees with her.
During the period 1968 through this year, there have been 51 instances around the nation when a petition deadline was declared unconstitutional. No state other than Montana ever set a new deadline, by administrative means, using the Secretary of State’s method. On the other hand, since there are no known individuals who have expressed a desire to be independent candidates (for office other than President) in Montana this year, the matter may be moot. It is extremely likely that the 2013 session of the legislature will pass a new deadline.
This link to the Texas Secretary of State has primary election returns for the Democratic and Republican Parties.
On May 22, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Hawaii issued a 55-page ruling in Kostick v Nago, 1:12-cv-184. The panel denied injunctive relief to a group of voters who had sued to alter the redistricting plan for state legislative districts. The Hawaii Constitution says redistricting should be based on permanent residents, so the state had altered the Census Data to exclude students and military who seem not to consider Hawaii their permanent residence.
The decision says that the issues are complex, but that no injunction postponing the primary and ordering a new set of districts will be granted. The decision says the lawsuit should have been filed earlier, and points out that if relief were granted, the August primary would need to be postponed. The three judges did not say which one of them wrote the opinion. The three are M. Margaret McKeown of the 9th circuit, and U.S. District Court Judges J. Michael Seabright and Leslie E. Kobayashi.
Census data asks people about their “usual residence”, which means “the place where a person lives and sleeps most of the time” and “is not necessarily the same as the person’s voting residence or legal residence.” The decision does acknowledge that “Hawaii elected officials still represent temporary residents – it is a fundamental Constitutional principle that elected officials represent all the people in their districts, including those who do nor or cannot vote.” The excluded groups include about 8% of the population of Hawaii.
