Two Colorado legislators, Senator David Balmer (R-Centennial) and Representative Jonathan Singer (D-Longmont) have introduced SB 65. It allows cities and counties to use Approval Voting, if the election is non-partisan. Here is the text of the bill. Approval Voting allows a voter to vote for as many candidates as he or she wishes, even though only one is to be elected. The candidate with the most votes wins. Thanks to Frank Atwood for this news.
Texas Representative Bill Zedler (R-Arlington) has introduced HB 650. It requires political parties to submit proof that the party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees meet the constitutional qualifications. It makes similar requirements for independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and even for declared write-in candidates for the same offices.
The bill requires a party to obtain signed statements from its nominees, giving authority for the Texas Secretary of State to obtain copies of birth certificates from the original issuing authority. It does not require the party nominees themselves to furnish birth certificates. It gives the Secretary of State the authority to examine the birth records and reject a filing if the Secretary of State does not believe the documents are valid. The bill would have no effect on presidential primary ballot access. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
On January 25, Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were tried and acquitted of trespassing. The arrest had been in August 2012 in Philadelphia, when the two Green national standard-barriers had sat in at the Fannie Mae office. See this story.
This Businessweek article identifies Shannon County, South Dakota, as the county that cast the highest percentage of its votes (of any county in the nation) for the Democratic presidential nominee in each of the last three elections. As the article explains, the vast majority of voters in Shannon County are Native American.
The November 2012 vote in Shannon County for President was: Obama 2,937; Romney 188; Gary Johnson 14; Virgil Goode 6. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On January 28, Massachusetts Representative Dan Winslow (R-Norfolk) will introduce two bills to improve ballot access. One lowers the number of signatures for candidates for federal and state office, by cutting the current requirements in half. That bill affects candidates seeking a place on a partisan primary ballot, or candidates petitioning directly onto the general election ballot. The statewide petition requirement for the more important statewide offices (U.S. Senator, Governor) would fall from 10,000 signatures to 5,000. Currently candidates seeking a place on a presidential primary ballot don’t need any signatures, but the bill would lower the presidential general election petition from 10,000 to 5,000.
The other bill eases the definition of “political party.” Current law requires a group to have polled 3% for any statewide race at the last election for any statewide office, or to have registration of 1% of the state total. The bill would change both the vote test and the registration test to one-half of 1%. If the bill were to pass this year in that form, the Libertarian Party and the Green Party would both regain their status as qualified parties, because both parties polled over one-half of 1% for President in 2012.
The Massachusetts registration method for qualifying a new party has existed since 1991, and it is so difficult, no group has ever used it. The Libertarian Party was a qualified party during the period 2008-2010 because it polled over 3% for U.S. Senate in 2008. The Green Party lost its qualified status in November 2012, because it didn’t meet the 3% vote test for either President or U.S. Senate. Neither party ran a U.S. Senate candidate in 2012.
If the one-half of 1% vote test for any statewide race had existed continuously during the last 25 years, the only parties that would have been ballot-qualified, but which were not actually ballot-qualified, other than the Libertarian and Green Parties, would have been the New Alliance Party, which polled over one-half of 1% for U.S. Senate in 1988.
