Juan Williams, an award-winning journalist who worked for National Public Radio 2000-2010 and is now a political analyst for Fox News Channel, writes here that Ron Paul might conceivably be the Americans Elect presidential nominee.
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Christine Todd Whitman, who was elected as a Republican to the New Jersey governorship in 1993, and re-elected in 1997, has endorsed Americans Elect. See this op-ed from the Washington Post. Whitman was also Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency between 2001 and 2003. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The Sixth Circuit will hold oral arguments on January 17, 2012, in Kurita v State Primary Board of Tennessee Democratic Party. The hearing will be at 1:30 p.m. in Cincinnati. This is the fascinating case, filed in 2008, over whether a party has a constitutional right to set aside the results of its primary and designate the primary loser as the party’s nominee. In 2008, State Senator Rosalind Kurita, a Democrat, had won the Democratic primary for another term in the Senate. But the Democratic Party rejected her as its nominee and instead designated the person who had polled the second-most number of votes in its primary.
The U.S. District Court had then upheld the action of the Democratic Party. Kurita had angered her party by her vote in favor of a Republican to head the Tennessee Senate. Also, the party charged that many Republicans had voted in the Democratic primary to help Kurita win her primary. Tennessee has open primaries and no registration by party.
On November 3, the Wisconsin legislature passed SB 116, which moves the non-presidential primary from September to August, and which also moves various deadlines for ballot access to earlier dates.
The independent presidential petition is now due in early August instead of early September; the petition deadline for a full party is now May 1 instead of June 1; and the independent non-presidential candidate petitions are now due in June instead of July. It is considered certain that the Governor will sign the bill.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states in which each U.S. House district elects its own presidential elector. In November 2008, Barack Obama won one electoral vote from Nebraska, because he carried the 2nd district, centered on Omaha. Ever since, bills have been introduced in the Nebraska legislature to reimpose the old winner-take-all system for presidential electors, but they have not yet passed. Currently, LB 21 is stuck in the Government Committee.
This story shows that a Democratic member of the legislature had recently applied for a seat on the Revenue Committee, but then he realized, if he got it, he would be leaving the Government Committee (Nebraska Senators can only serve on one committee). The Government Committee is currently tied between members who support the current district system for presidential electors, and those who support LB 21, the bill to create winner-take-all. When the Democratic Senator realized that if he shifted committees, that would allow appointment of a new member who might support LB 21, the Democratic Senator withdrew his request to transfer committees. So, for the moment, LB 21 still can’t pass.
Nebraska’s legislature is officially non-partisan, but this incident shows that in reality, the behavior of Nebraska legislators is just as partisan as if the law provided for partisan elections for the legislature. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.