Law Professors Chris Elmendorf and David Schleicher have this op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle of February 28. They present evidence that non-partisan elections are faulty, because many voters are so dependent on party labels, they simply won’t vote in elections without party labels. The op-ed focuses on elections for San Francisco city office.

The op-ed suggests that statewide political parties aren’t relevant to San Francisco politics, so they don’t recommend making San Francisco elections partisan. Instead, they suggest that the city amend its election ordinances to list on the ballot which candidates for city office, other than Mayor, are endorsed by the Mayor.

A better solution, which isn’t mentioned in the op-ed, is to make it possible for local political parties to be recognized. Many cities and counties in other parts of the United States have local political parties and partisan elections for local office. This is especially true in Connecticut, New York, and Illinois. California election law relating to political party qualification does not permit a party to be recognized in just part of the state.

Joe Schwarz, a former Republican congressman from Michigan, will say on Monday, March 1, whether or not he will run for Governor as an independent. See this story. Michigan has never had an independent candidate for Governor on a government-printed ballot. Michigan didn’t permit independent candidates for any office, until courts forced the state to create such provisions in 1988.

Schwarz would need 30,000 valid signatures. If he runs, he would be at a disadvantage because independent candidates in Michigan get the lowest spot on the ballot. Also, parties have straight-ticket devices, but of course there is no such thing as a straight-ticket device for independent candidates.

On February 25, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges and Elections Committee completely altered SB 624. The bill, as passed unanimously by the Senate on February 1, expands the list of which groups can see the list of who voted in a recent past election. Currently political parties, candidates, and PACS can see the list. The bill, as originally introduced, said that non-partisan groups working to improve voter turnout may also see the list. The subcommittee altered the bill to provide that no one may see the list. This was a surprise. Campaigns find the list of who voted in the last election to be a very valuable list.

But, on February 26, the full committee voted to Table the bill. This may mean that the full Committee wants to think about the issue some more. The legislature will be in session another two weeks.

The motivation for the bill was that The Know Campaign had sued Virginia last December. The Know Campaign wants to obtain the list of who voted, so that it can send postal mail, telling voters in particular neighborhoods which of their neighbors voted in the last election. The Know Campaign has done this in other states, and research does show that when people know their neighbors may learn whether they vote or not, turnout does increase. The Virginia Attorney General asked the legislature to expand the list of groups that may see the list, in order to settle the lawsuit. In 1996, a U.S. District Court in Hawaii ruled that if a state lets candidates and parties see the list of who voted, then it cannot keep that information from newspapers.