New York Magazine has this lengthy story about Americans Elect, by John Heilemann. There is not a lot of new material in this article, but the author, having interviewed leaders of Americans Elect, clearly believes that if Ron Paul wanted the Americans Elect nomination, he could obtain it. This contradicts some commentary that believes that leaders of Americans Elect can stop any proposed presidential candidate they don’t like.
Atlanta Progressive News queried all three candidates in the special election set for February 4, to fill the vacant State House seat (60th district) if they support ballot access reform. The two candidates who responded both said “Yes.” The third candidate has so far not replied to the questionaire. See here. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
It is odd that the Georgia Secretary of State’s Advisory Council still has not released its recommendations for changing Georgia election laws. The Council held public meetings around the state during the spring and summer of 2011, and heard more complaints about ballot access than about any other election law issue. It is likely that the Council is not releasing its recommendations until after it has received approval for its ideas from key legislative leaders, and that process is taking longer than expected.
On January 23, the voter-plaintiffs submitted a response in Perez v State of Texas, the Texas redistricting case that is in 3-judge U.S. District Court in San Antonio. That court had asked them to respond to the state’s idea that the status conference in this case be on an earlier date than February 1.
The voter-plaintiffs say the same attorneys who are representing them in San Antonio are also representing them in the 3-judge court in Washington, D.C., which is holding a trial on whether the legislature’s plan violates the Voting Rights Act. Therefore, they say it is entirely impractical to have proceedings in both courts simultaneously this week. They request that the status conference in San Antonio continue to be set for February 1.
The Democratic Party of Texas also filed a document in San Antonio on January 23. The Democratic Party filing says, “The Texas Democratic Party has and continues to support a unified primary insofar as it is possible. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court ruling in this case seems to require substantial additional work from counsel to this case and from this Court, in particular. The members of the Court are best able to determine what and when they can accomplish in terms of reviewing the evidence, preparing interim maps and issuing opinions to support each interim map. The Texas Democratic Party is prepared to work with all parties with respect to the preparation of an election schedule once it is known when district maps will be available.” This is very vague, but seems to hint that perhaps Texas should hold two primaries, one for president, U.S. Senate, and local partisan office; and one for U.S. House and state legislature.
As this story explains, Proposition 14, the “top-two” measure, abolished party nominees and party primaries in California (except for President). So the California Democratic Party has already started holding meetings to decide which Democrat for various U.S. House and state legislative races will get the party’s endorsement for the June 2012 primary. This development illustrates one of the ironies of the movement in favor of “top-two”; that movement includes people who say they hate political parties and want to destroy the influence of political parties.
Russia holds a presidential election on March 4. According to this story, it is likely that stringent ballot access laws will block several leading candidates from the ballot. Although the Russian government has proposed easing ballot access, the bill to do that won’t take effect in time for the 2012 election.
