According to this story, the Ohio legislature is considering the idea of having primaries for state and local office, in 2012, in March; and having the presidential primary and congressional primaries in May. Thanks to Josh Putnam of Frontloading HQ for the link.
On September 21, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates, a Bush Jr. appointee, upheld the parts of the federal Voting Rights Act that require certain states to pre-clear election law changes with the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department. The case is Shelby County, Alabama v Holder, D.C., 1:10cv-651. Here is the decision.
The Alabama case is one of several constitutional challenges to this part of the Voting Rights Act. A few months ago, another U.S. District Court had in Washington, D.C., had also upheld this part of the act, in a case filed by some North Carolina voters. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news and for the link to the decision, which is 151 pages long. UPDATE: a third case challenging the pre-clearance parts of the Voting Rights Act, State of Arizona v Holder, happens to be before Judge Bates, so that increases the odds that the Arizona challenge will also lose. See this story.
This Wall Street Journal story says the U.S. Justice Department has asked a U.S. District Court to order New York state to hold its primary (for office other than president) on a date earlier than September. This occurred in an ongoing lawsuit by the federal government against New York state, to enforce federal law that tells states to mail foreign absentee ballots no later than 45 days before a primary, or before any election for federal office.
The California Secretary of State has placed this chart on her web page. It shows how many signatures Americans Elect submitted on its petition to be a party, by county. If a particular county has already checked signatures (using a random sample), the chart shows the results. So far, the validity is at 76.8%, which shows that the petition is very likely to succeed. The chart will be updated daily. Not all counties have reported the number of signatures submitted, so as of today, the chart cannot be used to know how many signatures were submitted in the entire state. Americans Elect says it submitted 1,630,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 1,030,040.
On September 19, proceedings began in the criminal trial of John Haggerty, who is accused of taking over $1,000,000 in funds from the New York Independence Party and not carrying out the political work that he had contracted to do. He was supposed to help organize poll watchers on election day in November 2009 who would help Bloomberg’s campaign. Bloomberg had given the money to the Independence Party, and then the party had given the money to Haggerty. After the first full day, only five potential jurors had been identified. See this story. The case is People v Haggerty, New York County 2598/2010.
