The New Orleans Times-Picayune has this story about the approaching deadline for candidates to qualify for the Americans Elect primary ballot. The story, published early on May 14, says Buddy Roemer has 5,618 “clicks”. As of 12:45 p.m. eastern time on the same day, the Americans Elect web page says now he has 5,668. He needs 10,000 with at least 1,000 from each of ten states.
On May 14, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Igartua v United States, 11-876. This is the case on whether the U.S. is obliged by various treaties it has signed to give Puerto Rico voting representation in Congress. Although the First Circuit had ruled against Puerto Rico in this same case, the decision had been 2-1.
Puerto Rico is the most populous jurisdiction in the world which has no voting representative in the national legislature (among those countries that have elected national legislative bodies). If Puerto Rico were entitled to voting representatives in the U.S. House, it would have eight or nine U.S. House members.
All overseas possessions of France, Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal are treated as parts of that nation, for representation in the national legislature. This is not true for Great Britain, but Great Britain’s most populous unrepresented colonial possession is Bermuda, which has fewer than 75,000 inhabitants. Aside from that, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, are not considered parts of Great Britain and have their own parliaments, even though they recognize the British monarch as their own head of state.
Fog City Journal has this brief description of the Jill Stein-Roseanne Barr presidential debate that took place in San Francisco on the evening of May 12.
On May 13, the most populous German state, North Rhine-Westphalia, held elections for its own state government. The Green Party polled 11.3%, the Free Democrats polled 8.6%, the Pirate Party polled 7.8%, and The Left polled 2.5%. The Social Democrats polled 39.1% and the Christian Democratic Union, which governs Germany, only polled 26.3%. Other parties polled the remainder of the vote. See this story.
Although thousands of articles and opinion pieces have been published about the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v FEC, this article is noteworthy. It is by Jeffrey Toobin and appears in The New Yorker. As is traditional for that magazine, the article is very long (ten pages on a computer) and contains far more than opinion and analysis. It is lengthy because it gives the history of the case, filled with interesting details.
