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.
The Hawaii bill to use Instant Runoff Voting in special elections, HB 638, will not pass this year, even though it had passed both houses. On the evening of April 28, the conference committee tabled the bill. The committee expressed concerns about the difficulty of re-programming the vote-counting machines.
On May 2, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Siefert v Alexander, 10-405. This lawsuit attacked Wisconsin’s ban on judges making public endorsements of candidates for partisan office. The 7th circuit had upheld that ban 2-1. Wisconsin does not prevent judges from endorsing candidates in non-partisan elections, but does prevent them from endorsing candidates in partisan elections. The plaintiff, a Democrat, had wanted to publicly endorse Barack Obama in 2008 and had also wanted to endorse various Democrats in 2010.
The case also involves Wisconsin’s ban on judges asking personally for campaign contributions. Wisconsin elects its state court judges in non-partisan elections. The 7th circuit had unanimously upheld that Wisconsin restriction.
