According to this story, the various challenges to Republican presidential primary candidates in Illinois are all being dropped. The various Republican presidential candidates concluded a “truce.”
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Rhode Island requires 1,000 signatures for a presidential candidate to get on a presidential primary ballot. No one can circulate who didn’t file a declaration of candidacy by Saturday, January 21. The only Democrat who filed is President Obama. Seven Republicans filed the declaration of candidacy: Mark Callahan, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.
Presumably, most, but not all, of those Republicans are now circulating the petition, which is due February 2. Of course it is virtually certain that Rick Perry is not circulating a petition. The Rhode Island Republican Party is helping circulate petitions for the candidates it recognizes. Any registered voter may sign, even though Rhode Island has registration by party. The primary is April 24.
On January 23, Fox & Hounds, a prominent California political blog, ran this commentary, criticizing the California legislature for moving to eliminate write-in space on general election ballots. The commentary is by Michael Feinstein. The bill to abolish write-in space on November ballots for Congress and partisan state office, AB 1413, has already passed the State Senate and will probably have a hearing in the Assembly Elections Committee on Thursday, January 26.
Among the 29 states that have registration by party, all such states have now released a registration tally as of late 2011, or January 2012, except for California and Massachusetts. When California and Massachusetts report their data, it will then be possible to know precisely how many registered voters there are in each party in the nation, and also how many registered independents there are.
By law, California’s registration tally is due today, but several counties have not yet reported, and the Secretary of State’s office says the data won’t be available until Friday, January 27, at the earliest.
Los Angeles County says that Americans Elect has 2,857 registered voters. Orange County, the second most populous county, has 226 Americans Elect registrants. Santa Clara, the most populous county in northern California, says it has zero Americans Elect registrants.
Missouri holds a presidential primary on February 7. That is the only presidential primary in February, except for February 28 primaries in Arizona and Michigan. The Joplin Globe has this story about the Democratic presidential primary ballot in Missouri, which contains only four names: President Obama, Darcy Richardson, Randall Terry, and John Wolfe. However, the article entirely focuses on Randall Terry, who is opposed to legal abortion.