Pierce County, Washington, used Ranked Choice Voting for the first time for certain partisan county offices in 2008. Now there is a ballot measure (placed on the ballot by the County Commission) that asks the voters if they wish to repeal that system. Tacoma’s daily newspaper, the News Tribune, has this article about the campaign.
On October 13, Eugene Platt declared his candidacy for the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2010 from the 115th district. He is the Green Party’s only elected official in that state; he currently serves on the James Island Public Service District Commission, having been re-elected to that position last year. Here is his web page, although it appears not to have his recent declaration posted yet.
Platt had tried to run for the legislature in 2008. After the Green Party had nominated him at its convention in April 2008, he had also run in the Democratic primary. Because he lost the Democratic primary, his nomination by the Green Party was voided by the State Election Commission. He and the Green Party are currently in the 4th circuit, arguing that the state law that permits such retroactive disqualification is unconstitutional. South Carolina does permit two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, and is the only fusion state that says one nomination can be jeopardized if the candidate tries and fails to win a second party’s nomination.
Two election law-related bills in Congress continue gaining co-sponsors. HR 2499, to set a plebescite on Puerto Rico’s future political status, now has 181 co-sponsors, up eleven since September 29.
HR 1826, for public funding of Congressional campaigns, now has 101 co-sponsors, up eleven since September 29.
On October 22, Thursday, the Connecticut legislature will hold an informational hearing on to discuss whether the public funding law should be amended, to eliminate or reduce the parts of the law that discriminate against minor party and independent candidates. See this story. The hearing is before the Government Administration and Elections Committee.
The attorney for the Georgia Secretary of State has won permission from the 11th Circuit to file a brief in Coffield v Handel, the case challenging Georgia’ ballot access requirements for independent candidates for U.S. House. The state’s brief had been due on September 17, and the state failed to meet this deadline.
Georgia requires a petition of 5% of the number of registered voters for an independent candidate for U.S. House to get on the ballot. Georgia requires a similar petition for minor parties, even those that are qualified statewide, unless that party polled 20% of the vote for President in the entire nation, or unless it polled 20% for Governor, at the last election. No one in Georgia has completed the 5% petition for U.S. House since 1964. All candidates and parties that have tried, have failed, even when they have submitted double the requirement. The rate of invalid signatures is always very high, because so many well-meaning voters sign the petition even though they don’t live in the appropriate district, and of course those signatures are invalid. There have been bills to ease the requirements in six sessions of the legislature in the past 20 years to ease these requirements, but they never pass.
