On July 23, Illinois election officials removed Virgil Goode (Constitution Party), Stewart Alexander (Socialist Party), Rocky Anderson (Justice Party), and Michael Hawkins (Together Enhancing America Party) from the November 2012 ballot.
The man who had challenged their petitions had decided to withdraw his challenges to their petitions. But the hearing officer refused to let him speak, so he wasn’t able to withdraw the challenges.
According to this article, Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Maryland) is about to introduce a bill to provide that every adult U.S. citizen is entitled to a voucher for $50, that could be used by that individual to contribute to a congressional candidate or a political party. The bill has other features as well. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Democracy for the link.
Ralph Nader recently filed this brief in support of his claim against the Maine Democratic Party, and the national Democratic Party, over its actions to prevent voters from voting for him in the 2004 presidential election. The case is pending in local state court in Washington County, Maine. The brief is interesting because it gives some specific details of some of the actions taken by the Democratic Party.
Kevin Knauss, a blogger who is a Democrat and who lives near Folsom, California, predicts here that many Democrats in the 6th Assembly District will simply not vote for anyone in November, for Assembly. The two candidates on the ballot in that race are both conservative Republicans. Knauss says that neither one of the two Republicans has made any appeal for centrist or Democratic votes.
His observation contradicts the opinions of top-two supporters, who say they like general election races in which only one party has any candidates on the ballot, because these top-two supporters believe this causes candidates to move toward the center. Actually, if either Republican did that, the other Republican would pounce and say the opponent is just a “Republican-in-name-only” (“RINO”) and probably the perceived “RINO” would lose the general election.
Here is a recent column by California journalist Thomas D. Elias, who promotes the idea that having two candidates from the same party on the November ballot, and no other candidate, is a good idea.
Electoral-vote and Frontloading are two blogs that have recently posted summaries of all state-based presidential polls. Frontloading has a 2012 Electoral College map, based on a weighted average of state polls, posted on July 20 that shows President Obama with 332 likely electoral votes and Mitt Romney with 206 electoral votes. Scroll down here within the July 20 entry until the map is reached.
Electoral vote blog, which constantly updates its state polls, as of July 21 is showing President Obama with 342 likely electoral votes and Mitt Romney with 196 electoral votes. See here.
