On November 15, the Peoria, Illinois city council voted to retain cumulative voting for its five at-large city council seats. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
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On November 14, the U.S. government filed this response in Bluman v Federal Election Commission in the U.S. Supreme Court. The response defends the federal law that does not permit resident aliens to donate money to candidates for any public office if that resident alien is not admitted permanently. The brief discusses instances when foreign governments have attempted to influence U.S. elections through its own citizens who were residing in the U.S. at the time. Examples include Germany in 1935, China in the 1990’s, and Libya.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet decided whether or not to hear this case. The lower court had upheld the law. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.
On October 11, 2011, the Colorado Supreme Court returned the lawsuit Riddle v Ritter to the U.S. District Court, which had sent it to the State Supreme Court over a year ago. The lawsuit concerns Colorado’s law that says individuals can donate up to $4,000 to legislative candidates who are nominated via primary, but only $2,000 to legislative candidates who are nominated via convention or petition.
The case is Riddle v Ritter, 10-cv-1857 in U.S. District Court, and 11-sa-12 in the Colorado Supreme Court. The lead plaintiff is Joelle Riddle, who wanted to give more than $200 to Kathleen Curry, an independent candidate for the Colorado legislature in 2010. Riddle filed in U.S. District Court, but the U.S. District Court had sent the case to the Colorado Supreme Court, to see if the Colorado Supreme Court might rule that the discriminatory limit violates the Colorado Constitution. But now the Colorado Supreme Court has declined to get involved, so the issue is back before the federal court.
Ever since 1999, Florida has had extremely easy procedures for parties to become ballot-qualified. All they had to do was file a list of state officers and bylaws. Under a bill passed in 2011, however, parties must have at least three officers, and they must all be registered members of their own party. This story predicts that these requirements will soon reduce the number of qualified parties to ten or so. The author lists the parties he expects to continue to exist, but for some reason he failed to include Americans Elect.
On November 11, Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick signed HB 3788, which moves the non-presidential primary from September 18 to September 6. This makes it possible for Massachusetts to comply (just barely) with the 2009 federal law that requires overseas absentee ballots to be mailed at least 45 days before any federal primary or federal general election. There could still be a problem if there are any primary contests that are so close that it takes an extra long time to determine the primary winner.
September 6 is a Thursday, not a Tuesday. The state did not want to hold an election on the day after a federal holiday. The primary date change has no effect on the petition deadline for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties.
The fact that HB 3788 has been signed reduces the chances that the legislature will pass the bill that combines the March presidential primary and the September non-presidential primary into a unified primary in June, even though that idea would save at least $8,000,000. Thanks to Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ for this news.