A new political party is petitioning for a place on the South Carolina ballot. Although it uses the name “American Party”, it is intended to be a centrist, moderate party. See this story. Thanks to Scott West for the link.
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In 2010, the Greenville County Republican Party, and the South Carolina Republican Party, filed a lawsuit to enable the party to limit voting in its primaries to only party members. Earlier this month the state Republican Party withdrew from the lawsuit. However, according to this story, the state party’s Executive Director, Alex Stroman, says the state party still supports the lawsuit, and the state party will simply let the Greenville County Republican Party carry on by itself. The state party says it withdrew from the lawsuit to save attorneys’ bills. This seems odd, because there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason why the Greenville Republican Party and the state Republican Party needed separate attorneys in any event.
The June 16 Toledo Blade has this editorial about Ohio’s current system for electing state judges. Ohio has partisan primaries for judicial posts, and party nominees go on the general election ballot. Oddly, though, there are no party labels for judicial candidates on the November ballot. The editorial criticizes this system and seems to imply that partisan involvement in judicial elections should be entirely ended.
On June 15, the Idaho Republican Party rejected a plan to limit access to the party’s primary ballot to only those candidates who were approved by party committees. See this story. The party did re-affirm its commitment to the current policy of allowing only registered Republicans to vote in the party’s primary.
On June 12, North Carolina HB 951 passed the House Finance Committee. It repeals the state income tax form check-off that asks taxpayers if they wish to send a small donation to their favorite political party. In recent years a surprisingly large number of taxpayers have chosen to send a donation to the Libertarian Party, so much so that last year, the party got $96,664.