Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, has “The Bipartisanship Racket” in the December 19 print edition. He examines the “No Label” organization with a critical eye. Thanks to Eric Reinhardt for the link.
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Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, has “The Bipartisanship Racket” in the December 19 print edition. He examines the “No Label” organization with a critical eye. Thanks to Eric Reinhardt for the link.
The European Union is considering a proposal to allow the initiative process. See here for the proposal. It would require the signatures of 1,000,000 voters. The petition requirement also would provide that the initiative petition must have a substantial number of signatures from at least one-third of the nations in the European Union. These minimum signature requirements from individual countries vary from 72,000 in Germany (the most populous nation in the European Union) to 4,500 signatures from each of the lowest-population nations, which are Cyprus, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Malta.
The proposal suggests that a method be found to let voters sign the petition electronically. It also suggests a time limit of one year to gather the signatures. It provides that after 300,000 signatures had been collected and submitted, the European Union would examine the proposal to make sure that its topic is germane to the treaty that establishes the European Union. Thanks to Election Updates for the link.
As noted earlier, a lawsuit is pending in a lower state court in Iowa, over the problem that the State Constitution says judicial retention elections must be held on separate ballots than the ballot for other offices. The state ignored this constitutional requirement in November 2010, and put the judicial retention question on the ballot used to elect people to federal office, state office, and county office. At that election, the voters voted to remove three members of the State Supreme Court. They faced political opposition because they had been part of the unanimous decision last year that said the Iowa Constitution requires the state to permit same-sex marriage.
The Des Moines Register has this interesting article about the dilemma the lower court judge faces. If he upholds the challenge to the election, there is some likelihood that the voters will feel disenfranchised. On the other hand, if he says the vote was valid even though it was not held in accordance with the State Constitution, he will seem to have validated the objections of many people who feel that judges are not really faithful to constitutions.
In January, New Hampshire Representative Tim Comerford (R-Fremont) will introduce a bill to set up a two-tier system of qualified parties. A group that polls 2% for Governor or U.S. Senator would be a qualified convention party, and a group that polls 4% for Governor or U.S. Senator would be a qualified party that nominates by primary.
The bill will also make it possible for voters to register as members of unqualified parties, and election administrators would recognize those registrations and keep a tally. Currently, the New Hampshire voter registration form has a blank line in the question about political party choice. But even though any voter can write in the name of an unqualified party, elections officials treat such voters as independents.
New Hampshire is the only New England state in which only the Democratic and Republican Parties are ballot-qualified. During the last 90 years, New Hampshire has never granted qualified status to any party, other than the two big parties, except that the Libertarian Party was qualified from November 1990 to November 1996.
Representative Comerford was elected in 2008 at the age of 22. He is on the Election Law Committee in the House.