On March 24, the California Secretary of State announced that the initiative to legalize marijuana has qualified for the November ballot. The Attorney General says the title will be “Changes California Law to Legalize Marijuana and Allow it to be Regulated and Taxed.”

This is the first initiative that has qualified for the California November ballot, although there is already a statewide measure concerning water that the legislature put on the November ballot. Other initiatives must qualify no later than June 24.

Jerry Brown, who inevitably will be the Democratic Party nominee, has already said publicly that he is opposed to this initiative. Presumably the Republican nominee (likely to be Meg Whitman) will also declare her opposition. If “top-two” were already the law in California, these two candidates would be the only two individuals on the ballot in November for Governor, and no write-ins would be counted. Thus Californians would not be able to vote in November for any gubernatorial candidate who favors this initiative.

On March 24, a hearing on procedural motions was held in U.S. District Court in Riddle v Secretary of State, the case over Colorado’s law that bars independent candidates (for office other than President) if they had been registered into a qualified party at any time during the year before filing. Both sides agreed to expedite the case. All briefs will be submitted on or before April 2.

In the meantime, the legislature is also considering a bill to ease the restriction. HB 1271 has already passed the House and has a Senate committee hearing on March 29.

On March 23, two members of the U.S. House introduced HR 4918, to require states to draw up redistricting plans for U.S. House district boundaries in a public process. The bill would require states to have an internet site to inform the public of all aspects of that state’s redistricting planning.

The bill would require that the internet site give advance notice of any meetings by state legislators or others, on the subject of redrawing the boundaries of the districts. The site would be required to include census data for that state. The site would be required to let members of the public post comments about the plan, and the comments must be posted no later than 3 days after they are made. The group handling redistricting would be required to publish its decision-making criteria. Here is a copy of the bill. The authors are John Tanner (D-Tennessee) and Michael Castle (R-Delaware).