The Pottstown, Pennsylvania newspaper, the Mercury, has this op-ed about the messy consequencees for Pennsylvania state legislative candidates, due to the invalidation of the state’s new legislative district boundaries. The petitioning period for candidates seeking a place on the primary ballot is only three weeks long, and has already started.

The op-ed even suggests that the true motive of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for invalidating the redistricting plan is that the Court is miffed at the legislature for not raising judicial pay. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.

The Columbia Missourian has this story about the Libertarian presidential primary in Missouri, which is being held on February 7. Anyone could have got on that ballot by paying a filing fee of $1,000, but the only person who did so is James Ogle of California, so the article is about him. The article doesn’t explore the question of who else is seeking the party’s nomination at its national convention in May in Las Vegas, or why no one else filed for the primary.

The Columbia Missourian is published daily, both on paper and electronically. It was founded in 1908 as the nation’s first newspaper published by a School of Journalism, and also in 1992 became one of the first periodicals to put content on the web.

The link works, but it takes about 30 seconds to load after one clicks on it.

On January 31, the Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee passed SB 62. It provides that voter registration forms should ask for a political party selection. The bill also says that parties would then be free to decide whether to let all voters vote in its primaries, or just members of the party, or just members of the party and independents, or just voters who didn’t vote in the primary of any other party. Under existing law, the voter registration form doesn’t ask the voter to choose a party, and any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.

The bill would not permit voters to register into an unqualified party. However, the bill is vague as to whether the voter would write in the name of a party on a blank space, or whether the form would have checkboxes for the qualified parties.

The vote in Committee was 8-7.