Kentucky elects its statewide state officers on November 8, 2011. There are three candidates on the ballot for the combined office of Governor/Lieutenant Governor. On October 24, a televised debate was held for the three candidates for Lieutenant Governor (Republican, Democratic, independent). See this story. There will be another three-way gubernatorial debate soon.
Americans Elect has announced a series of press conferences around the nation, to increase its own visibility, and to make its nomination process clearer to the public. The first event is at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on November 2. Four more events in November are at these locations: (1) Harvard University, Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School, on November 7; (2) University of Denver on November 10; (3) University of Southern California’s Unruh School of Politics on November 16; (4) Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) on November 28.
On October 24, Michael Osborne, an independent candidate for the Virginia legislature next month, filed a lawsuit in state court against the state’s discriminatory laws on checking signatures.
In Virginia, all candidates running in a primary must petition to get on the primary ballot, but the petitions are not checked for validity. Independent candidate petitions, and the petitions of nominees of unqualified parties, on the other hand, are checked for validity. Osborne’s lawsuit argues that the Virginia Constitution bars such unequal treatment. See this story.
On October 24, the Illinois Green Party filed a lawsuit in state court in Chicago to preserve its qualified party status in the U.S. House and state legislative districts in which it polled 5% in November 2010. Illinois law says if a party polls at least 5% for a district office, then that party is automatically qualified in that district in the next election.
In November 2010, the Green Party nominees for U.S. House in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 18th districts each received over 5% of the vote. These districts are all in the Chicago area, except the 18th district is centered on Peoria. Also in 2010, the Green Party nominees for State House received over 5% of the vote in the 29th, 39th, 68th, 79th, 105th, and 115th districts. But the state says the party’s qualified status in all these districts is inoperative because redistricting this year changed their boundaries.
This same issue arose after the 2001 redistricting in Illinois, for Libertarians. In 2002 one State Court of Appeals, the First District, ruled in favor of continued qualified status; but another State Court of Appeals, the Second District, ruled against continued qualified status. Neither decision was appealed to the State Supreme Court, so the issue remains ambiguous. The 2002 cases were Preuter v State Officers Electoral Board (the favorable ruling, from Cook County), and Vestrup v DuPage County (the unfavorable one). The new Green Party lawsuit is Schmidt v State Board of Elections, in Cook County Circuit Court, 11-ch-36783. Thanks to Phil Huckelberry for this news.
On October 23, Tunisia voted for a Constituent Assembly, which is expected to write a new constitution for the nation. See this blog post at Fruits and Votes to read the details. The Assembly has 217 seats and its members were elected from 33 districts, using the party list system of proportional representation.
Here is the New York Times story about the results. It appears that the dominant party will be Ennahda, which is considered moderate Islamist. However, Ennahda probably won’t gain an absolute majority, and will almost certainly form a coalition government with two smaller parties. Thanks to Bob Richard and Thomas Jones for the links.
