On March 7, an El Paso Church filed an expedited appeal with the Texas Supreme Court, in Tom Brown Ministries v Cook. The State Appeals Court had ruled that a recall petition is invalid, even though it had enough valid signatures, because a church did a great deal of the work organizing support for the recall and that church happens to be incorporated. Here is the 63-page brief filed by the church (the argument itself is only 18 pages, and then there are appendices attached).
On March 8, the Maine Senate passed LD 1774, which eliminates extra public funding for candidates for state office who have well-funded opponents who don’t take public funding. This step is necessary, because on June 27, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v Bennett that public funding systems can’t give extra public funds to candidates based on characteristics of the people running against that candidate.
San Francisco also has public funding for candidates, and is in the process of conforming its system to that U.S. Supreme Court ruling as well.
Policymic has this essay by Daniel Kamerling, advocating approval voting. The article specifically says the contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination would be improved if presidential primaries used approval voting.
Policymic calls itself “an online news platform to engage millennials in debates about real issues.” The term “millennials” generally means people born after 1982, who were graduating from high school at the dawn of the current century. Thanks to Rosa Barker for the link.
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.
