Gautam Dutta, a California attorney and activist for electoral reform has this op-ed published in the June 1 Daily News of Los Angeles. The Daily News has the second-greatest readership of any newspaper in Los Angeles County.
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This June 1 story give the amount spent on advertising for and against each of California’s five ballot measures for the June 8 ballot. Proposition 14, the top-two system, has received $4,536,050 from supporters, and $208,550 from opponents. It is believed that the Libertarian Party is about to spend $10,000 opposing Proposition 14, probably mostly on radio ads.
On June 1, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved in McComish v Bennett, the case from Arizona over public funding for candidates for state office. The 9th circuit had upheld Arizona’s public funding system. Here is the Court’s order.
The Court rejected the appeal of opponents of public funding for a technical reason. Opponents of public funding are free to try again, if they fix their technical glitch. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. UPDATE: on the afternoon of June 1, opponents of the Arizona system filed a corrected document.
A poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times and for the University of Southern California shows that California’s Proposition 14 has the support of 52% of the voters. 28% oppose it. The other 20% is undecided. See this story. The poll was conducted May 19-26.
The previous poll, by the PPIC, showed support at 60% and opposition at 27%.
With 86% of the vote counted, the presidential candidate of Colombia’s Party of National Social Unity is far outpacing the presidential candidate of the Green Party. Juan Manuel Santos has 46.5%, and the Green Party’s nominee, Antanas Mockus, has 21.7%.
The Party of National Social Unity was formed in 2006. If no one gets 50%, there will be a run-off on June 20.