Texas legislators are already introducing bills for the 2011 session. State Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) has introduced SB 139, to abolish the straight-ticket device.
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The Hartford Courant has this story about Connecticut’s decentralized election system, in which the Secretary of State has no power over the administration of federal and state elections, relative to the town clerks. As the story says, this is the standard method used throughout New England. That is why New England states require candidates for statewide office to submit signatures collected in each town, directly to that town. In most New England states the candidate or party must then collect those local signatures, after they have been checked, and transport them to the Secretary of State. Ballot access in New England is considerably more difficult than it is in most parts of the nation, partly for this reason.
David F. Nolan, who founded the Libertarian Party along with a group of others in Nolan’s living room, died on November 21 at the age of 66. He had just completed a vigorous and relatively successful election campaign for the U.S. Senate this month, receiving 4.7% of the vote in a 4-person race against incumbent Senator John McCain. Nolan was two days away from his next birthday. He lived in Tucson.
Apparently he suffered a stroke while driving his automobile, on November 20. On a personal note, this is very sad news.
On November 17, the United States government filed this brief in opposition, in Clemons v U.S. Department of Commerce, 10-291. This is the case that says that “one person, one vote” principles require that the size of the U.S. House of Representatives be increased. As things stand, Montana and Wyoming each have one seat, but Montana has twice as many people as Wyoming. Thanks to Michael Warnken for the brief. UPDATE: here is the reply brief, which responds to the government’s arguments.
The Libertarian Party 2012 presidential convention will be in Las Vegas, May 4-6, 2012. This is the earliest the Libertarian presidential convention has been since the 1992 presidential election, when the national convention was in September 1991. The latest Libertarian presidential convention was in 1996, and was in early July.
The 2012 date and location were chosen by the Libertarian national committee on November 21.
The two major parties recently have been holding their presidential conventions in early September of the election year.
No political party has previously held its presidential convention in Las Vegas. Other cities that bid for the 2012 convention were San Francisco and Dallas, with a last-minute proposal for Ontario, California.