New York city elects its mayor and other important city offices on November 5, 2013, in partisan elections. Adolfo Carrion, Jr., former two-term President of the Bronx, and Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy, and a registered independent, is seeking the Mayor’s office.

On February 16, Carrion was the only candidate for Mayor invited to speak at the annual national conference of IndependentVoting. Leaders of IndependentVoting are also leaders of the New York City Independence Party, and it is clear that leaders of the New York city Independence Party support Carrion for the party’s nomination. Carrion will also seek the nomination of the Republican Party, but it is not yet certain that Republican Party leaders will permit him to enter the Republican mayoral primary. Because he is not a registered Republican, he must get permission from party leaders in order to appear on the Republican primary ballot.

Here is a story about Carrion’s appearance at the IndependentVoting conference. If elected, Carrion will be the first New York city mayor of hispanic origin; he is Puerto Rican.

When Carrion was elected President of the Bronx, he was a registered Democrat. He switched from being a Democrat, to being an independent, on October 12, 2012.

This story explains why boundaries for Texas U.S. House districts, and legislative districts, are not necessarily settled for the 2014 election. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

Washington state has a law pertaining to local initiatives, which says that when a voter signs the same petition twice, neither signature should be counted. Recently, a local initiative in the city of Vancouver was invalidated because of this law. The petition was 32 signatures short, but would easily have qualified if voters who had signed twice had not had both the signatures invalidated.

Proponents of the initiative sued in state court, and the case is pending. The County Auditor of Clark County, the main defendant, writes in this op-ed that the law is unjust, and he hopes it is overturned in court. The initiative was to block extension of Portland, Oregon’s light rail system into the city of Vancouver, via a new bridge over the Columbia River.