Janet Hughes, a candidate for School Board in the Lemont-Bromberek Combined School District in Cook County, Illinois, has been removed from the April 2011 ballot because her petition sheets weren’t fastened together. See this story. She is hoping a court will reverse the decision of the School Board, and put her back on the ballot.
West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, who is only the Governor now because the elected Governor resigned to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, says he will work to create the position of Lieutenant Governor. Currently, West Virginia is one of only seven states that doesn’t have a Lieutenant Governor. The last state to create that position was New Jersey, which elected a Lieutenant Governor for the first time in 2009. See this story.
The Idaho legislature convenes on January 10. According to this story, a bill will be introduced that lets parties block adherents of other parties from voting in that party’s primary. However, it will not block independent voters from voting in any party’s primary.
The story is not very detailed, but seems to suggest that the bill will set up a system somewhat like Illinois’ system, in which the voter registration form would still not ask for a choice of party. Instead, a record would be made of which party’s primary a voter chose. Then, presumably, in the next primary, the voter would be required to choose the same primary that he or she had chosen last time, unless in the interim that voter had filed some sort of paper showing a change of party allegiance.
Idaho currently has a “secret open primary”, in which a voter decides which party’s primary to vote in, in the privacy of the voting booth.
CATO, a well-known libertarian think-tank, and the Center for Competitive Politics, have both received permission to file amici curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v Bennett, 10-238. This is the case that challenges extra public funding for certain candidates in the Arizona system of public funding for candidates. Both briefs will be on the side of the candidates and groups that challenged that aspect of the Arizona system. Both groups had also earlier filed amici in this case, urging the Court to hear the case.
The case will be argued March 28. When the case was in the lower courts, it was called McComish v Bennett. The new name of this case is rather cumbersome.
On January 6, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued Directive 2011-01, which says that the Constitution, Green, Libertarian, and Socialist Parties will be qualified parties during 2011. The only regularly-scheduled partisan elections in Ohio in 2011 are in several cities. However, it is always possible that there will be special elections for U.S. House, if a current member of the U.S. House resigns or dies.
There are no special legislative elections in Ohio. When a member of the legislature dies or resigns, the party of that former member chooses a replacement. Thanks to Steve Linnabary for the news about the directive. Ohio does not now have a valid law regulating minor party ballot access, because it was declared unconstitutional in 2006 and has not yet been replaced by the legislature.
