The February 19 issue of California Watch has this article about a letter sent recently by wealthy campaign donors to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to support HR 1826, the Public Funding bill in the U.S. House. That bill has been stuck at 133 co-sponsors all month. The article has a link to the letter itself, which is dated February 17. It has 57 signers. Thanks to Calitics for the link.
Three Rhode Island Democratic Senators have introduced SB 2150. It requires political parties to let independent voters vote in their primaries. The authors are Leonidas Raptakis, Marc Cote, and Michael Pinga. Some leaders of the Republican Party have been thinking about excluding independents from the Republican primary. The existing law is vague about whether parties can exclude independents.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that let each U.S. House district elect its own presidential elector. In 2008, Barack Obama carried the Nebraska district that is based in Omaha. A bill to re-establish electing all presidential electors statewide, LB 777, has a hearing on Wednesday, February 24, in the Senate Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.
On February 18, four Georgia Representatives introduced HB 1257. It abolishes mandatory ballot access petitions for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties. Georgia has always required independent and minor party candidates to pay the same large filing fees that Democrats and Republicans pay to run in primaries. So, this bill, if enacted, would not be impractical. The filing fees would still keep the ballot uncrowded.
The sponsors are: Alan Powell (D-Hartwell), E. Culver “Rusty” Kidd (Independent-Milledgeville), Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross), and Tom McCall (R-Elberton).
One possible problem with the bill relates to independent presidential candidates. Georgia has no filing fee for presidential candidates, so the bill, as written, would permit any independent presidential candidate to get on the November ballot with neither a petition nor a filing fee.
It is entirely fitting that this bill should be co-authored by Representative Kidd. His father, Culver Kidd, was a State Senator for 50 years, and he was the author of the last ballot access reform bill in Georgia, which passed in 1986. That 1986 bill lowered the statewide petitions to 1% of the number of registered voters. That is still a very difficult hurdle, but it is better than the law which existed before 1986.
The younger Kidd was elected to the Georgia House on December 1, 2009, in a special election, as an independent candidate.
The other two pending ballot access bills are SB 359 and HB 1141. Thanks to Jason Pye for this news.
Illinois Representative Mike Fortner (R-West Chicago) has introduced HB 6214. It significantly cuts the number of signatures needed by independent candidates, but it makes their petition deadlines worse.
Existing law requires independent candidate petitions to be submitted by late June of an election year. Statewide independents need 25,000 signatures. District and county independents need signatures of 5% of the last vote cast. The bill lowers the number of signatures to the same number of signatures needed by candidates seeking a place on a primary ballot, so that would be 5,000 signatures for statewide office, and approximately 600 signatures for U.S. House.
Unfortunately, the bill changes the deadline to 75 days after the primary, which would be mid-April. That deadline would be unconstitutional for presidential independents.
