Caroline Lucas, the newly-elected Green Party member of the British House of Commons, recently gave her maiden speech in that chamber. Here is the text. It is endearing.
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Gallup Polls has been tracking voter attitudes toward the Democratic Party, and toward the Republican Party, for decades. A new poll released on June 1 shows that public esteem for each of these parties is near record lows for the last 28 years. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
Gautam Dutta, a California attorney and activist for electoral reform has this op-ed published in the June 1 Daily News of Los Angeles. The Daily News has the second-greatest readership of any newspaper in Los Angeles County.
This June 1 story give the amount spent on advertising for and against each of California’s five ballot measures for the June 8 ballot. Proposition 14, the top-two system, has received $4,536,050 from supporters, and $208,550 from opponents. It is believed that the Libertarian Party is about to spend $10,000 opposing Proposition 14, probably mostly on radio ads.
On June 1, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to get involved in McComish v Bennett, the case from Arizona over public funding for candidates for state office. The 9th circuit had upheld Arizona’s public funding system. Here is the Court’s order.
The Court rejected the appeal of opponents of public funding for a technical reason. Opponents of public funding are free to try again, if they fix their technical glitch. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link. UPDATE: on the afternoon of June 1, opponents of the Arizona system filed a corrected document.