On the evening of February 9, the British House of Commons passed the preliminary stage of a bill to provide for a public vote next year on whether to use Instant Runoff Voting for parliamentary elections. See this story. The vote was 365-187. The bill has additional steps before it is passed by the House of Commons, and then it must receive attention in the House of Lords. The British term is “alternative vote.”
The deadline to apply to serve on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission has been extended to February 16. Here is the application.
On February 9, the California Assembly Rules Committee voted to send the nomination of Abel Maldonado, to be the new Lieutenant Governor, to the Assembly floor. California has no Lieutenant Governor now because the former incumbent, John Garamendi, was elected to Congress in a special election last year. California’s Constitution lets the Governor appoint vacancies in the statewide elected executive positions, subject to legislative veto. Maldonado is the State Senator who forced the California legislature to put the “top-two open primary” ballot measure on this year’s primary ballot. He had said he would not vote for the budget unless that were done.
Maldonado is a Republican, and Democrats control both houses of the California legislature. The Senate Rules Committee had approved Maldonado’s nomination earlier. In 2005, when California had a vacancy in the Secretary of State position, the Democratic-majority legislature also approved Governor Schwarzenegger’s nomination of a Republican to fill that vacancy.
Last year, Tennessee Representative Eric Watson (R-Cleveland) introduced HB 270, to require new voters, when they register, to include a copy of a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate, to prove that the new voter is a U.S. Citizens. However, he has abandoned that part of the bill, and will amend it to simply put a severe warning on voter registration forms about the penalties for a non-citizen registering to vote. The bill had a hearing on February 9 and will hear the amended version on February 16.
Arizona has a similar law, but it is under attack in federal courts. The 9th circuit will probably issue an opinion soon. The Arizona case is Gonzalez v State of Arizona, 08-17094.
On February 9, the New Hampshire House Election Law Committee held another hearing on HB 1264. It seems that a majority of members of the Committee are inclined to support it. There will be yet another hearing on this bill next week. HB 1264 makes significant improvements for minor party ballot access.
Another bill, HB 1188, which makes only slight improvements to ballot access, was defeated, because the Committee seems more interested in working on HB 1264. Thanks to Rich Tomasso for this news.
