According to this story, it is possible Texas will move its primary for U.S. House and state legislative seats to May, even though the state would presumably holds its presidential primary, and its primary for statewide offices (such as U.S. Senate, and partisan judicial races) in March. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Christine Todd Whitman has told the press that she would be pleased if Jon Huntsman were to seek the Americans Elect presidential nomination. See this story on Politico. Whitman is one of the eight members of the Executive Committee of Americans Elect. The others are Peter Ackerman, Dennis Blair, Stephen W. Bosworth, Kahlil Byrd, Eliot R. Cutler, Irvine O. Hockaday Jr., and Joshua Levine.
The story is also interesting because Whitman talks briefly about her awkward encounters with certain Republican Party leaders, in the days since Whitman joined the Americans Elect leadership.
On November 25, well-known PBS TV host Charlie Rose conducted a 20-minute interview with Elliot Ackerman and Kahlil Byrd, two of the most prominent leaders of Americans Elect. See it here.
At ten minutes into the interview, Rose asks why Americans Elect seems to only be interested in contesting the presidential election. Byrd says that it is quite likely that in 2014 and 2016, it will have nominees for Congress and state office. Thanks to Alex Hammer for the link.
Although Maine’s legislature is not in session, some of its committees are meeting. According to this story, recently the Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee wrote a bill to abolish Maine’s public funding program for candidates for state office. In Maine, legislative committees are Joint committees, composed of members of each of the two houses.
Last month, the Party for Socialism and Liberation announced that it will run Peta Lindsay for President, and Yari Osorio for Vice-President. This will be the party’s second presidential campaign. In 2008, it ran Gloria La Riva for President. She polled 6,818 votes in tbe nation.
Lindsay is age 27, and Osorio is age 26 and was born in Colombia. Thus, neither meet the constitutional qualifications to hold the offices they are seeking. However, some legal decisions during the past three years have suggested that elections officials cannot keep presidential or vice-presidential candidates off the ballot because of constitutional qualifications. For example, in 2010, the California State Court of Appeals said the Secretary of State “has no discretion for the general election ballot…With respect to general elections, section 6901 directs that the Secretary of State must (must is in italics) place on the ballot the names of the several political parties’ candidates.” This decision is Keyes v Bowen, and dealt with President Obama’s qualifications. Alan Keyes, who had charged that Obama did not meet the constitutional qualifications, had then appealed this decision to the State Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, but both courts refused to hear the appeal, so the Court of Appeals decision stands.
