Ballotpedia Study Shows 42.6% of State Legislative Races in 2011 Have Only One Major Party Member Running

Ballotpedia has this very useful analysis of the regularly-scheduled state legislative elections. The study finds that in 42.6% of the races, only one major party candidate is running in the general election. This is even worse than the norm in even-numbered election years, when many more states hold regularly-scheduled legislative elections. Generally, in even-numbered years, between 32% and 37% of the races have only one major party person running.

Because there are relatively few minor party and independent candidates, this means that most voters this year have only one choice on general election ballots for state legislature. Legislatures dominated by Republicans and Democrats pass laws that make it very easy for members of those two parties to run for office, and (in many cases) very difficult for anyone else to run. Then, the two major parties, having achieved near-monopoly status for themselves, do not even use their guaranteed spots on the ballot to recruit and run nominees much of the time. And yet courts continually uphold restrictive ballot access laws under the theory that without those laws, the ballots will be too crowded.

Kentucky Holds Three-Candidate Debate for Lieutenant Governor

Kentucky elects its statewide state officers on November 8, 2011. There are three candidates on the ballot for the combined office of Governor/Lieutenant Governor. On October 24, a televised debate was held for the three candidates for Lieutenant Governor (Republican, Democratic, independent). See this story. There will be another three-way gubernatorial debate soon.

Americans Elect Kicks Off Publicity Campaign

Americans Elect has announced a series of press conferences around the nation, to increase its own visibility, and to make its nomination process clearer to the public. The first event is at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on November 2. Four more events in November are at these locations: (1) Harvard University, Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School, on November 7; (2) University of Denver on November 10; (3) University of Southern California’s Unruh School of Politics on November 16; (4) Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) on November 28.

Virginia Independent Candidate Sues for Equal Treatment for Petition Validation

On October 24, Michael Osborne, an independent candidate for the Virginia legislature next month, filed a lawsuit in state court against the state’s discriminatory laws on checking signatures.

In Virginia, all candidates running in a primary must petition to get on the primary ballot, but the petitions are not checked for validity. Independent candidate petitions, and the petitions of nominees of unqualified parties, on the other hand, are checked for validity. Osborne’s lawsuit argues that the Virginia Constitution bars such unequal treatment. See this story.