On October 25, the Arizona Supreme Court said it will hear State of Arizona v City of Tucson, cv-11-0150. This is the case on whether Tucson may decide for itself whether to use partisan elections for its own city offices, or whether the state legislature has the authority to require it to use non-partisan elections. The Superior Court had ruled in favor of the state, but then the State Appeals Court had reversed that and ruled in favor of Tucson.
It has now been almost four weeks since Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi introduced SB 1282 in the Senate. This is the bill to provide that each U.S. House district would choose its own presidential elector. The bill has not moved out of the Senate State Government Committee, even though it was given a hearing on October 4. This suggests that the sponsor knows the bill would be unlikely to pass the legislature, and has given up on it.
The North Carolina legislature is not now in session, but some legislative committees are still holding study sessions. This article describes a recent committee discussion about how state judges should be chosen. Currently all state judges are elected in non-partisan elections. Many observers feel the voters are not informed about judicial candidates. Some want to return to partisan elections, so that at least voters would know the partisan affiliation of candidates for judicial office; others want to switch to appointing judges instead of electing them.
The Wisconsin legislature is currently considering SB 116, a bill with the major purpose of moving the primary (for office other than President) from the first Tuesday in September to the first Tuesday in August. Unfortunately, the bill also moves the petition deadline for a new party from June 1 to April 1. And the bill does not relax the current requirement that makes it illegal to circulate this petition in an odd year. Therefore, if the bill passes in its current form, the petition for circulating this petition would shrink from five months to three months. Furthermore, that petitioning period would be almost entirely in winter, when weather can inhibit petitioning.
The bill has passed the Senate, but has been amended in the Assembly. The Assembly will probably pass it next week and then it returns to the Senate for another vote.
The South Carolina Supreme Court will soon construe the state’s election law to determine if the Republican Party must pay for all of the administrative costs of the January 21, 2012 Republican presidential primary. The Court issued a briefing schedule, and all briefs will have been filed by November 7. The case is Beaufort County v South Carolina Election Commission.
