Ohio Legislature Approves Bill to Move All Primaries to March 6, 2012

Posted on by December 14, 2011
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On the afternoon and evening of December 14, the Ohio legislature passed HB 369, which moves both the presidential primary and the primary for other office to March 6, 2012.

Just the day before, the legislature had held hearings on HB 391, a bill to set all primaries on May 22.

HB 369, which will probably be signed by the Governor soon, sets a December 30, 2011 deadline for candidates seeking a place on that March 6 primary. It passed each house with more than a two-thirds margin, so it can go into effect immediately. The bill has no effect on the independent presidential candidate petition deadline, which remains in August 2012. However, it is not good news for independent candidates for office other than president. They now need 5,000 signatures for U.S. Senate, and approximately 2,000 signatures for U.S. House, and they must gather them all during the next eleven weeks, in winter weather. The petition deadline for independent non-presidential candidates is primary day. Thanks to Josh Putnam for this news.

San Francisco Charter Amendment Introduced to Let Voters Rank as Many Choices in City Elections as they Wish

Posted on by December 14, 2011
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On December 14, San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and John Avalos introduced a proposed charter amendment, which would change the Ranked Choice Voting system so that voters could list as many choices as they wish. Currently San Francisco’s version of Ranked Choice Voting only lets voters mark their First, Second and Third Choices. Generally, other jurisdictions that use Ranked Choice Voting let voters have as many choices as they wish.

Americans Elect Submits Rhode Island Party Petition

Posted on by December 14, 2011
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On December 14, Americans Elect submitted its petition for full party status in Rhode Island. The state requires 17,115 valid signatures, and Americans Elect submitted 33,000. Americans Elect is only the second group to have used the Rhode Island party petition procedure. The first group to do so was the Moderate Party, which did its petition in 2009.

The party petition procedure has only existed in Rhode Island since 1994. Before 1994, Rhode Island did not have any procedure for a group to transform itself into a qualified party in advance of any particular election. Instead, all it could do was submit a candidate petition, and only if that candidate polled at least 5% for Governor did the group become a qualified party. The Rhode Island ACLU and the Rhode Island Secretary of State worked together in 1994 to persuade the legislature to improve the law. The 1994 bill also expanded the list of offices, from just Governor, to President.

Assuming the Americans Elect petition is valid, the state will hold a primary for it in 2012, for all partisan office, and anyone in Rhode Island will be permitted to run for any partisan office in the party’s primary. The Rhode Island primary (for office other than President) is September 11, 2012.