On July 13, the U.S. House unanimously passed HR 3535. It makes it illegal for someone who is not living legally in the U.S. to contribute money to a state or local ballot measure, a referendum, or a recall. The bill has co-sponsors from both major parties. Here is the text.
Law Professor Richard Pildes here presents a plan to add 150 more members of the U.S. House. The new members would be elected statewide, or possibly in large regions of each state that would elect 3 or 4 members. The new members would be chosen in a manner to create proportional representation between each of the two major parties. If the previous statewide vote for U.S. House in a particular state showed that 60% of the electorate favored Republicans, then the new members would be seated so as to create a total delegation from that state in which 60% of the members were Republicans. This aspect would eliminate incentives for state legislatures to draw gerrymandered districts.
It’s unfortunate that his plan doesn’t include minor parties into the proportional system. Also the system doesn’t really work unless a state has party nominees for U.S. House, which is not the case in Alaska, California, Louisiana and Washington.
On July 21, as expected, the Illinois State Board of Elections ruled that Mayra Macias and Byron Sigcho-Lopez should not be on the ballot as independent candidates in the 4th U.S. House district. They each needed 10,816 valid signatures, and each submitted approximately twice that number, but they were challenged and found not to have enough. Thus continues the Illinois record, that no independent or minor party candidate for U.S. House who was challenged ever gets on the ballot. One must go back to 1974 to find an instance when such a petition was challenged for that office and validated. This sentence does not apply to election years that end in “two”, because in those years only 5,000 signatures are needed.
Last week, a Pennsylvania state trial court interpreted the election code to not require write-in candidates for party office to get a minimum of ten write-in votes in the primary. See this story. The law appears to contradict itself on the minimum number of write-ins needed to be seated. One part of the law sets a minimum number of write-ins, but another part of the law says that whoever gets the most write-ins can be seated, regardless of how few write-ins they receive.
On July 30, U.S. District Court Judge Sara Darrow issued an opinion in Flowers v Illinois State Board of Elections, c.d., 4:26cv-4062. This is a lawsuit against the Illinois 5% petition for independent candidates for U.S. House. The judge dismissed the procedural objections to the lawsuit, and clears the way for a trial.
