HR 1826, the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to provide for public funding for congressional candidates, now has 156 co-sponsors. It gained three co-sponsors during the last two weeks. No other election law bill pending in Congress has gained any co-sponsors during June.
On June 25, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed HB 292. It ends partisan primaries for Congressional elections. All candidates for Congress will run on a single primary ballot in November. Usually someone gets over 50%, and there is no other election. But if no one gets 50%, there will be a runoff in mid-December.
On June 25, a Colorado State District Court put Jennifer Coken on the Democratic primary ballot for State House, 4th district. Her petition had been invalidated because the Secretary of State had ruled that she didn’t have enough valid signatures. But, the Judge restored signatures of voters who had signed Coken’s petition, and had also signed a petition for one of her opponents.
The Secretary of State had credited the signatures of voters who had signed both petitions to Coken’s opponent, because the opponent had submitted her petitions first. But, the judge said there is no statutory authority to do that.
The judge also restored some signatures that had been invalidated because her circulator had moved during the petitioning process. See this story. The Secretary of State plans to appeal to the State Supreme Court.
The Constitution Party petition for ballot access in Wyoming was due June 1, and it needed 4,988 valid signatures. The Secretary of State has checked the petition and says the party only submitted 4,600 valid signatures. The raw number of signatures submitted was 6,276.
If the petition had succeeded, this would have been the first time the Constitution Party had been on the ballot as a party in Wyoming. The Green Party has never been on in Wyoming. The law requires a number of signatures equal to 2% of the last U.S. House vote.
The only ballot-qualified party in Wyoming now, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, is the Libertarian Party, which has been on continuously starting in 1994 because the Libertarian Party always meets the 2% vote test to remain on.
Kathleen Curry, Colorado’s only independent state legislator, who is being blocked from the November ballot, expects to appeal the adverse decision in Riddle v Daley. Curry petitioned for a place on this year’s ballot as an independent, but even though the petition has enough valid signatures, she is barred from the ballot because she didn’t leave the Democratic Party until December 2009.
The law that bars her has already been relaxed by this year’s session of the legislature, but the new, more relaxed law doesn’t take effect until 2011.
