On March 8, the Nebraska Senate passed LB 759. The bill repeals the law passed in 2007 that makes it illegal for out-of-state residents to circulate petitions in Nebraska. The vote was 41-2. The restriction had been declared unconstitutional last year.
On March 8, the Missouri House passed HB 1236 by a vote of 144-1. It eliminates the typographical error, first created in 1993, that requires petitions to qualify a new party to list presidential elector candidates on the petition, if the group intends to have a presidential nominee that year.
The major point of the 1993 legislation was to permit parties to circulate their petitions before they chose their nominees. Then, after the petition was submitted, the newly-qualified party would nominate by convention. The error in the 1993 law, contradicting this goal as to presidential electors, should have been fixed long ago. Other bills to fix the problem have passed the legislature in past years, but because the fix was included in omnibus election law bills, sometimes those bills got vetoed because the Governor didn’t like an unrelated part of that same bill.
The only “No” vote was cast by Representative Rory Ellinger (D-University City). Thanks to Ken Bush for this news.
This New York Times explains the French practice of requiring television and radio stations to provide equal amounts of air time for all presidential candidates, starting on the filing deadline for presidential candidates, and extending through the entire campaign season.
Lawrence Lessig here defends Americans Elect for not telling the world who is paying for its petition drives and its costs for setting up the on-line presidential primary. Lessig is the author of “Republic, Lost” and a leading critic of campaign finance practices in the U.S., and a law professor. Here is the wiki page about him. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.
Anthony Wing Kosner has this Forbes column, arguing that a relatively new concept in physics, the Constructal Law, predicts that the U.S. habit of forcing all electoral activity into just two dominant political parties is not sustainable. The Constructal Law is explained in a 2012 book by Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane, “Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization.”
Kosner is a design specialist. His column ought not to concede that the U.S. has always had a two-party system (although “two-party system” has many meanings, and people who use it ought to define it whenever they use it). In the 1850’s the United States had four major parties, and in the 1890’s it had three major parties. Also Wisconsin, in the period 1934-1944, had three major parties; and Minnesota in the period 1922-1942 also had three major parties.
The title of Kosner’s piece is “Duper Tuesday: Romney and Santorum Show we Already Have Three Parties (or More).”
