A Florida trial court will hold a trial on October 12 to determine if the winner of the Republican primary for one particular State Senate seat should be Jim Norman or Kevin Ambler. The Florida primary was on August 24, and Norman defeated Ambler. However, Ambler sued to set aside the results, on the grounds that Norman broke campaign finance laws. See this story. There are no Democratic, minor party or independent candidates in this race.
The Rhode Island gubernatorial nominees of the Republican, Democratic, and Moderate Parties, and independent candidate Lincoln Chaffee, will debate each other on October 6. See this story. Thanks to Gene Berkman for the link.
Randy Credico is the U.S. Senate nominee (full term) for the Libertarian Party of New York, and also the U.S. Senate nominee for the Anti-Prohibition Party. On October 6 he, along with both political parties, filed a federal lawsuit against a New York election law that doesn’t permit his name to be listed twice, even though both the parties that nominated him are on the ballot and even though New York permits fusion for qualified parties. Neither the Libertarian Party, nor the Anti-Prohibition Party, is a qualified party in New York. The case is Credico v New York State Board of Elections, eastern district, cv10-4555. Here is the brief.
The judge obligingly has already held a hearing and is promising a quick decision. The New York law says when a qualified party and an unqualified party jointly nominate a candidate for statewide office, that candidate is printed on the ballot twice, and a voter can choose which label to support. But when two unqualified parties jointly nominate someone, the candidate’s name can be printed only once (although both party labels are next to the candidate’s name, in small print).
Leslie Graves and Geoff Pallay, researchers at Ballotpedia, have published this report on the lack of voter choices on the ballot for state legislative races. The report says 32.7% of legislative districts have no contest between the two major parties this year.
Ballot Access News published a somewhat similar study in the October 1, 2010 print issue, and found 36.1% of the races lack a contest between a Democrat and Republican. The difference between the two studies is because of different treatment of multi-member districts. The Ballotpedia study considered a district to have a Democratic-Republican contest if it elects, for example, 5 members, and there are 5 Democrats and 1 Republican running. But the Ballot Access News study considered an example like that to lack Democratic-Republican competition for 4 seats.
Kentucky election law section 118.315 says that independent candidates for city office need 2 signatures, but independent candidates for other partisan local office that covers just part of a county need 20 signatures. An independent candidate for Louisville Metro Council, Deonte Hollowell, filed a petition of four signatures, and all four were valid. He was put on the ballot.
However, his Democratic opponent then sued, charging that independent candidates for that office need 20 signatures, not 2. On October 6, a state court in Jefferson County construed the law to require two signatures, not 20. See this story. The case is Clark v Hollowell, 10ci-6470. The Democratic candidate is considering whether to appeal. The independent candidate is the incumbent in his race, and he has Republican and Democratic opponents.
