On December 15, the San Francisco Bay Guardian carried this op-ed, pointing out some problems with the “top-two open primary” measure that the legislature put on the June 2010 California ballot.
Also, see this Letter to the Editor in the Marysville, California Appeal-Democrat, which also points out some problems with the measure.
Rich Rubino has an essay, “Yes, Joe Kennedy Can Win the Massachusetts U.S. Senate Race” at PoliticsDMZ at this link.
On December 16, the city attorney of Oakland, California, wrote this legal opinion which says that the city must use Instant Runoff Voting for its own city elections in 2010. The voters amended the charter in 2006 to use IRV, but only when elections officials had certified that the vote-counting equipment is ready. Because Secretary of State Debra Bowen fulfilled that last requirement last week, the opinion says the city council has no power to stop IRV, as long as the City Charter retains its existing language. Thanks to Blair Bobier for the link.
On September 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, had struck down federal campaign rules that tell non-profit groups that they cannot receive more than $5,000 from an individual, if the money is to be used for that non-profit’s own ad, commenting on a candidate for federal office. The case was Emily’s List v Federal Election Commission.
On December 17, the Solicitor General of the United States said that he will not appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
The government hopes to vitiate the Emily’s List precedent, by winning a very similar lawsuit called Speechnow.org v FEC. That case has an en banc hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, on January 27, 2010. Speechnow.org is a group that wants to make independent expenditures on behalf of candidates for federal office who uphold free speech. As in the case of Emily’s List, Speechnow.org wants to raise unlimited funds from individuals to help pay for its ads. The U.S. District Court had ruled against Speechnow.org on July 1, 2008. The case is going directly from U.S. District Court to the entire panel of full-time judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals. If the FEC wins in the U.S. Court of Appeals en banc, that precedent will overshadow the Emily’s List precedent, because the Emily’s List precedent is an ordinary appellate decision from a normal 3-judge panel.
By the time all the judges of the D.C. circuit hear Speechnow.org on January 27, chances are that the U.S. Supreme Court will have put out a decision in yet another campaign finance case, called Citizens United v FEC.
The December 17 issue of The Republican, the daily newspaper of Springfield, Massachusetts, has this editorial, opposing any 3-candidate debates in the upcoming special election for U.S. Senate. The independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy, should be excluded, the paper argues, because he is “little-known” and “no relation to the family of the deceased Senator.”
The political cultural of Massachusetts, and especially of its newspapers, seems highly tilted against having real competition in elections. According to the neutral, scholarly book “Reforming State Legislative Elections” by Political Science Professor William Salka, Massachusetts has the second-least competitive elections of any of the 50 states. Massachusetts is the only state in the east in which most legislative elections have only one candidate on the ballot. Massachusetts was the only state in the nation in 2008 in which a majority of U.S. House seats only had one candidate on the ballot. But, the Massachusetts media never comment on that aspect of Massachusetts elections. They seem to take it for granted, as though it were the norm, not worthy of commentary.
