On March 2, the voters of Burlington voted to repeal Instant Runoff Voting. The vote was 3,972 to repeal, and 3,669 to keep it. See this story.
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The Burbank Leader of February 2 has this story about the bills recently introduced in California to use Instant Runoff Voting in special congressional and legislative elections.
Texas held its 2010 primary on March 2. Turnout appears to be 800,000 voters in the Democratic primary, and 1,500,000 in the Republican primary, or a total of approximately 2,300,000. However, Texas has 13,023,358 registered voters.
Voters who voted in the primary cannot sign petitions for minor parties or independent candidates, which begin to circulate on March 3. Only about one-sixth of the voters voted in the primary, so petitioners will be able to collect from the other five-sixths of the voters. There will be run-off primaries in April, but they are unlikely to attract many voters. The Green and Constitution Parties will be actively trying to obtain the needed 43,991 valid signatures.
Ron Paul had three Republican opponents in his primary, but he still won over 80% of the Republican primary vote in his district.
On March 2, the Colorado House passed HB 1271 on second reading. The bill must still pass on third reading, but generally when bills pass on second reading, they also pass on third reading. The bill eases the length of time that an independent candidate must not have been a member of a qualified political party. The existing law says if an independent candidate was registered into a qualified party for even one day at any point in the 17 months before an election, that person cannot run. The bill eases that to eleven months before the general election.
On March 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, ruled that the Federal Election Commission’s 2006 decision, limiting the amount of money individuals may donate to a new political party that is not yet an FEC-recognized “national committee”, was erroneous. The FEC had ruled that individuals may only contribute $5,000 to new political parties that intend to run a candidate for President. Here is the 14-page opinion.
The FEC ruling was catastrophic for any new political parties that may come into existence in the future. Ross Perot founded the Reform Party in the autumn of 1995, and he spend lavishly for petition drives to get the Reform Party on the ballot. If the 2006 FEC ruling had not been reversed, that kind of activity would not have been legal in the future.
The McCain-Feingold law of 2002 limits an individual contribution to an already-established nationally-organized political party to approximately $29,000. That amount is indexed for inflation. The McCain-Feingold limit only applies to parties that are recognized as “national committees”. The FEC won’t recognize a party as a “national committee” until after it has run a presidential nominee and at least a dozen or so congressional candidates. The McCain-Feingold law doesn’t limit individual contributions to a new political party that isn’t yet a “national committee.” The FEC had classed Unity ’08 as a “political committee”, but the opinion says a “political committee” is a group that is supporting a particular candidate for federal office. Unity ’08 never had any nominees. Similarly, the Reform Party, when it was launched in 1995, didn’t have any nominees, and the FEC had never considered the Reform Party to be a “political committee”, fortunately for the Reform Party.