The Georgia Secretary of State has an Elections Advisory Council, which is holding public meetings around the state to hear ideas for improving Georgia election laws. The second such meeting is Wednesday, May 25, in Savannah, at 1 pm, at the Savannah Marriott Riverfront Hotel, 100 General McIntosh Boulevard.
At the first meeting, in Atlanta, on April 27, many people spoke in favor of easing the ballot access laws.
Nevada AB 81 has been amended to provide that petitions for a new party must be completed by April of an election year. Current law requires these petitions to be completed by May. AB 81 is one of the Secretary of State’s omnibus election law bills. It has passed the Assembly and the Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee, and will probably receive a vote in the Senate in two days.
In 1986 a U.S. District Court struck down Nevada’s old April petition deadline for new parties. That case was Libertarian Party of Nevada v Swackhamer, 638 F.Supp. 565. At the time, Nevada required newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary. Ever since 1987, Nevada has provided that newly-qualifying parties nominate by convention, so moving the petition deadline back to April is supremely irrational. The bill says the deadline to turn the signatures in to the Secretary of State will be in May. However, another law, not being amended by AB 81, says that the true deadine is 25 working days before deadline for the Secretary of State to receive the signatures, so the effective deadline imposed by the bill is April. Thanks to Janine Hansen for this news.
On May 24, the Maine Senate passed LD 142 by a vote of 21-14. The bill is now through the legislature. It eases the requirement that a qualified party must hold a town caucus within every county, during spring of even-numbered years. Instead, such caucuses would be required in any 14 of the state’s 16 counties.
On May 23, briefs were filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in Chamness v Bowen, the case that challenges two particular aspects of California’s top-two election system (the ban on counting write-ins, and the discriminatory policy that lets some candidates show a party label, but not others). Here is the state’s brief. Here is the brief of former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who has intervened in the case.
The state’s brief is interesting because it includes a copy of the sample ballot from the May 17 special U.S. House election in the 36th district. The intervenor’s brief is interesting because of its scornful, hostile tone. It says the rights at stake are “trivial” and “minor”. It opens by misquoting Albert Einstein, implying that the plaintiffs are “insane” for trying to win this case on summary judgment even though they did not succeed in getting injunctive relief earlier. They suggest that the attorney for the plaintiffs should be sanctioned because he didn’t discuss Burdick v Takushi in his brief. The intervenors also cite a case from Iowa in which the 8th circuit upheld Iowa’s failure to let people register as members of unqualified parties on voter registration cards, but they do not mention five other cases in which courts held that states must let voters register into unqualified parties.
On May 23, the Maine House passed LD 142. Current law says each qualified party must hold at least one town caucus, each spring of even-numbered years, in every county. The bill relaxes the requirement somewhat, and says a party must hold at least one town caucus in at least 14 of the state’s 16 counties. The Green Independent Party, the only ballot-qualified party besides the Democratic and Republican Parties, had requested this bill.
