On March 8, voters in Los Angeles approved Measure H by a margin of 75%-25%. It raises the amount of money available for public funding for candidates for city office. The old law, providing for public funding for campaigns, had a cap of $12,000,000 in the fund. Measure H raises that cap. For more details about the measure, see this analysis from Ballotpedia. Los Angeles has had public funding for candidates since 1990. Los Angeles, like all California cities, has non-partisan elections.
Election law professor Rick Hasen has posted a scholarly article that anyone may read on-line. Here is a link to the synopsis. It says that the U.S. Supreme Court took fewer election law cases in the 2001-2010 decade than in any previous decade since the 1950’s.
This newspaper story covers negotiations in the Idaho legislature over possible changes in the Republican Party primaries of the future. The very end of the story quotes Secretary of State Ben Ysursa as saying “The battle’s over”, which seems to say that the state won’t appeal the March 2 decision in Idaho Republican Party v Ysursa. The decision said that the Republican Party has a right to prevent non-Republicans from voting in its primaries.
On March 10, U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs, an Obama appointee, held a hearing (starting at 10 a.m.) in Greenville County Republican Party v State of South Carolina, 6:10-cv-1407. The hearing is in Greenville. This is the lawsuit in which the Republican Party seeks to prevent non-members from voting in the party’s primaries. The case also challenges a state law that says if a party decides to nominate by convention, it can only do that if at least 3/4ths of the delegates to a party meeting vote in favor of convention nominations. See this story, which was written before the hearing started.
The hearing is still preceding as this post is being written. Check back later for any possible account of the hearing. A decision is expected fairly quickly, because there are partisan elections for Greenville city office later this year and the party hopes for a ruling in time to affect that election. UPDATE: the hearing lasted 2.5 hours. The judge did not indicate when she will rule.
On March 9, the North Carolina House Elections Committee discussed the ballot access bill, HB 32, but did not pass it because of time constraints, and because not all amendments had been drafted. The committee still seems amenable to passing the bill, and lowering the number of signatures for new parties and independent candidates to get on the ballot. Also they seem willing to ease the vote test for a party to remain ballot-qualified. But they strongly desire to make the petition deadlines earlier in the year. The bill will probably be heard again on March 16.
