The Florida Senate had been scheduled to vote on SB 2086, the enormous omnibus election law bill that injures ballot access, and also injures voters in many other ways, on Tuesday, May 3. However, the vote is now set for Wednesday, May 4.
A similar bill, HB 1355, has already passed the House.
Fairvote Canada has already analyzed the Canadian election of May 2. Here is the proportion of the national popular vote won by each of Canada’s five leading parties: Conservative 40%, New Democratic 31%, Liberal 19%, Bloc Quebecois 6%, Green 4%.
By contrast, here is the percentage of seats won in Parliament by each of those parties: Conservatives 54%, New Democratic 33%, Liberal 11%, Bloc Quebecois 1%, Greens less than 1%. Thus the Conservative Party has an absolute majority in Parliament even though fewer than 40% of the voters voted for that party.
One hopes the British voters notice these results. British voters will vote in two days on whether to switch from “first past the post” to Instant Runoff Voting. One could wish the British were given a chance to vote on Proportional Representation, but even a vote for IRV will signal dissatisfaction with the existing system. Of course, the United States also uses “first past the post” for all its federal elections. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
See this story about the Canadian election of May 2. The Green Party did win its first election for a seat, and the New Democratic Party gained the second largest number of seats of any party. The Conservative Party won 166 seats, New Democrats 104, Liberal 34, Bloc Quebecois 3, Green 1. See this story for more details about the Green Party’s victory.
On May 2, Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller interpreted Nevada election law to mean that when the state holds a special U.S. House election on September 13, there will be no party nominees. Candidates will qualify for the ballot without regard to whether any particular party has nominated them. See this story. This will be Nevada’s first special election for U.S. House ever, so there are no precedents. Other states in which parties do not nominate candidates in special congressional elections are Georgia, Hawaii, and Texas. Those three states do let any candidate choose any party label.
Here is the Secretary of State’s schedule. It seems to indicate that the Secretary of State expects independent candidates to need a petition, whereas members of qualified parties do not. That is not logical, given that there will be no party nominees. In the other states in which there are no party nominees in special congressional elections, the ballot access hurdles for each candidate are equal and identical. But, because independents only need 100 signatures, it seems unlikely that any independent will sue. An earlier version of this post said they need 250, but the correct requirement is 100.
The Nevada schedule implies that each candidate will have a party label on the ballot.
On May 10, the 8th circuit will hear oral arguments in Green Party of Arkansas v Martin, 10-3106. This is the ACLU lawsuit against the Arkansas election law that removes parties from the ballot each time they fail to poll at least 3% for the office at the top of the ticket (president or governor, depending on which year it is). The hearing will be at 9 a.m. in Kansas City before Judges Michael Melloy, Duane Benton, and James Gritzner, all of whom are Bush Jr. appointees. Judges Melloy and Gritzner are from Iowa, and Judge Benton is from Missouri.
