On December 1, Gatewood Galbraith announced that he will be an independent candidate in November 2011 for Governor of Kentucky. He was the Reform Party candidate for Kentucky Governor in 1999, and he polled 15.33% of the vote in a 4-person race. This article says he was an independent in 1999, but that is not accurate.
The only three states with gubernatorial elections in 2011 are Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
On November 23, Virginia filed this response brief in Lux v Rodrigues, 10-1997. This is the case over residency requirements for petition circulators. Virginia’s brief tries to argue that the case is moot. However, Virginia’s brief does not even mention the U.S. Supreme Court precedent that first established that ballot access cases are not moot just because the election is over.
That old U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Moore v Ogilvie, from 1969, said, “While the 1968 election is over, the burden allowed to be placed on the nomination of candidates for statewide office remains and controls future elections, as long as Illinois maintains her present system as she has done since 1935.” Moore v Ogilvie did not say that the plaintiff-candidate needs to assert that he or she plans to run in future elections. In Richardson v Ramirez, 418 US 24, at page 35, the U.S. Supreme Court commented that in Moore v Ogilvie, the plaintiff-candidate “was not apt to be revived in a future election.” Yet Virginia’s new brief argues mightily that because Herb Lux, the candidate-plaintiff from the 2010 election, did not say he would run again in 2012, therefore the case is moot.
The deadline for filing challenges to petitions of candidates has closed in Chicago. Chicago will be electing three citywide offices, and 50 alderman seats, in its February 2011 election. The Board must hold hearings on 368 separate challenges to various petitions and statements of candidacy. See this list. Thanks to Phil Huckelberry for the link.
Most states do not use the challenge system. In most states, employees of the elections office (either state or local) determine if petitions are valid. Illinois, by contrast, assumes all petitions are valid, but anyone is free to challenge the validity of a petition, and then the Board of Elections must hold an adversarial hearing, which is time-consuming both for employees of the Board of Elections, and for representatives of the candidates.
According to this story, 13 state legislators have changed parties since the November 2, 2010 election. All changes were made by Democrats switching to the Republican Party. The 13 include one in South Dakota, one in Maine, six in Georgia, one in Louisiana, and four in Alabama. In Louisiana, that one switch gave Republicans a majority in the House for the first time since the 19th century.
The New York Times has this picture and story about a “write-in vote” etched in a freshly-poured concrete sidewalk.
