The New York Post reports that Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be a witness in the trial that opens September 12, in the matter of the money that Bloomberg contributed to the Independence Party and which the Independence Party then passed on to John Haggerty. Haggerty was to use the money to help the Bloomberg re-election campaign in 2009, but according to the indictment, he did not use the money on the campaign, but diverted it to his own use. Thanks to the Independent View for the link.

During the early summer of 2011, the Americans Elect web page posted a new national signature count for its various statewide petitions every week. This national total represented the sum of how many signatures had been collected around the nation on its various state petitions. But the July 28 posting of 1,747,557 had not been increased since then, during August. But on August 30 the web page showed a new national total, 1,755,707, an increase of only 8,150 signatures during August.

This CalBuzz article says Democrats in the California legislature may introduce a bill (or amend another election law bill to add a new provision) soon to provide that initiatives, no matter when they are submitted, will not appear on the June primary ballot. Instead they would wait and be placed on the November ballot. The rationale is that initiatives should be on the ballot that draws all voters to the polls. Democrats believe that the June 2012 primary ballot in California will have low turnout from Democrats, but high turnout from Republicans, because the Republican presidential primary will theoretically be exciting but the Democratic presidential primary will not be exciting. Therefore, the voters who show up in June would be skewed.

The June 2012 primary will also contain U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and legislature, but again, in 2012, the U.S. Senate race is likely to be more exciting for Republican voters than for Democratic voters, because incumbent U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein is running for re-election and no Democrat with any support is expected to enter the race against her.

California currently is the only state, or almost the only state, that ever permits statewide initiatives to appear on a primary ballot.