On May 24, New York voters filled the vacant U.S. House seat, 26th district. The results are: 48% for the Democratic nominee, 42% for the Republican nominee, 8% to Jack Davis (the independent candidate with the Tea Party label), and 2% for Ian Murphy, the Green Party nominee.
On May 24, the Ohio Senate passed SB 148 by a vote of 23-10. Like a somewhat similar bill that has passed the house, HB 194, it attempts to fix the old ballot access law that was held unconstitutional in 2006.
SB 148 cuts the number of signatures in half, from 1% of the last vote cast, to one-half of 1% of the last vote cast. Thus, it is better than HB 194, which does not lower the number of signatures. For 2012, if SB 148 were signed into law, the requirement would be 19,263 valid signatures. However, the petition deadline would be 100 days before the primary, which is still unconstitutional. The bill does not attempt to move the primary, so in 2012 the primary would be March 6 and the deadline would be the day after Thanksgiving this year.
The bill has a silly provision that says only half the signatures would be due in late November of the year before the election, and the other half would be due in early December of the year before the election. The original version of SB 148 had a special, much later deadline for parties that only want to run for President (80 days before the general election), but that idea was deleted from the bill before it passed the Senate.
Jane Corwin, Republican Party nominee for U.S. House in today’s special election in New York state, has obtained a court order, barring the votes from being certified until a state court judge holds a hearing about the election. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news. This action seems very strange, since it is not apparent that anyone has complained about any problems with the conduct of the election.
On May 20, Kansas HB 2080 was sent to the Governor. It cancels the 2012 presidential primary, in order to save money. The Governor is expected to sign it.
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.
