On April 15, the Washington State House Ways & Means Committee passed SB 5119. This is the bill that eliminates the presidential primary in 2012. The bill had already passed the Senate. The major parties would rather use caucuses to choose delegates to the national conventions anyway.

If this bill is signed into law, there will be no Washington state elections for Precinct Committee Officer. Precinct Committee Officer (“PCO”), is a political party office. Earlier this year a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that it unconstitutional to hold elections for party office in the general election, or the top-two primary election either, so the only remaining way to elect this office had been at a presidential primary. But if there is no presidential primary, there won’t be a publicly-funded election for this party office.

Louisiana Representative Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) has introduced HB 561, to require all candidates for President and Congress to submit birth certificates as a condition of appearing on the ballot. The provisions of the bill relating to candidates for Congress appear to violate the U.S. Constitution, Article I. They require candidates for Congress to certify that they are residents of Louisiana. However, Louisiana is in the 5th circuit, and the 5th circuit in 2006 ruled in Texas Democratic Party v Benkiser, 459 F.3d 582 (2006) that candidates for Congress are eligible whether they live in the state or not, at the time they file to run for office. The U.S. Constitution requires members of Congress to be residents of the state they represent “when elected”, not before. The Texas decision said that Tom DeLay was eligible to run for re-election in 2006, even though he had moved from Texas to Virginia. DeLay was hoping to be declared ineligible, because if he had been ineligible, the Republican Party would have been able to replace him as its nominee in the 22nd U.S. House district.

The U.S. Constitution does not bar naturalized citizens from serving in Congress.

The part of the Louisiana bill relating to presidential candidates seems flawed as well. The bill does not seem to acknowledge that not everyone has a birth certificate. By contrast, the bill on this subject that has already passed the Arizona legislature acknowledges this point, and has provision for alternate methods for proving one’s place of birth. The Louisiana bill requires either the national party or the state party to be responsible for submitting the birth certificate, although the birth certificate must be attached to an affidavit signed by the presidential candidate.

The Louisiana legislature convenes on April 25, and adjourns in late June. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the news of the Louisiana bill.

On April 5, Detroit elected members of Citizens’ District Councils in non-partisan elections. The city has 19 districts for this office, and each district elects six members every year, for three year terms. Each council has 18 members.

Matt Erard, a leader of the Socialist Party, was elected this year in the Downtown District. The election was not suspenseful, because only five candidates’ names appeared on the ballot. Erard had been a Socialist Party nominee for Congress in 2010, but did not get on the ballot; and he had been on the ballot as a Green Party nominee for the legislature in 2008.

Since last year, the Socialist Party has been asking the Michigan Supreme Court to hear its ballot access lawsuit. The court still hasn’t said whether it will hear the case. The application has been pending in the court for twenty weeks. The party challenges the law that requires almost twice as many signatures for a new party to get on the ballot, compared to the number of votes an already-established party needs to remain on the ballot.