According to this story, Hawaii elections officials are thinking about holding an all-mail ballot election to fill the expected future vacancy in the U.S. House, district 1. Congressman Neil Abercrombie has said he will resign soon so that he can campaign full-time for Governor in 2010.
Hawaii’s elections office is trying to save money, and feels mail ballots would save money. Last time the state held a special U.S. House election, it cost $2,000,000.
On December 16, the ACLU Voting Rights office filed a lawsuit in federal court against three Nebraska ballot access restrictions: (1) a law passed in 2007 that requires statewide independent candidate petitions (for office other than president) to include at least 50 signatures from each of 31 counties; (2) a law passed in 2008 that makes it illegal for out-of-state circulators to work in the state; (3) an older law that requires petitions that are circulated by a paid circulator to have printed in 16-point type, and in red, “This petition is circulated by a paid circulator.”
The case is Citizens in Charge v Gale, 4:09-cv-3255. The ACLU now has cases pending in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and South Carolina, against various ballot access laws that injure minor parties or independent candidates or both. Also the ACLU is helping with a North Carolina ballot access case, and it is handling the Connecticut case on discriminatory public funding. The new Nebraska case is filed on behalf of Donald Sluti, who wants to be an independent candidate for Secretary of State in 2010. The case is also filed on behalf of Citizens in Charge, which has members in Nebraska and nationwide who are professional circulators.
On January 19, a state court in Tucson, Arizona will hear the case called City of Tucson v State of Arizona. The issue is whether the State Constitution protects a city’s right to decide for itself whether it wants partisan or non-partisan elections for its own offices. This year, the Arizona legislature passed a law requiring cities to use non-partisan elections, but Tucson (which uses partisan elections) says the law violates the Arizona Constitution.
On January 11, a U.S. District Court in Phoenix will hear the Green Party’s case against the state’s ban on out-of-state circulators for petitions to put a new party on the ballot. Another issue in that case is whether the February 2010 deadline for new party petitions can be enforced against the Green Party, since the legislature moved that deadline to an earlier date and made the change effective in 2010, after the Green Party’s petitioning effort had already started.
Thanks to Independent Political Report for the news that Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and his wife both changed their registration from “Democratic” to “Independent” on December 15. See this story, in which Mayor Goodman says he hasn’t decided yet whether to run for Governor of Nevada in 2010 as an independent, but that he doesn’t approve of the two major parties.
The Boston Globe of December 16 has this editorial, telling the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in next month’s special election that she is wrong to refuse to debate, unless all three ballot-qualified candidates are invited.
The person who wrote this editorial probably doesn’t know that in Minnesota in 1998, every gubernatorial debate included Jesse Ventura, and there were dozens of such debates, all year long, in the primary season as well as the general election season. The Boston Globe says the independent, Joseph L. Kennedy, is “little-known”. Obviously, if he were included in all the debates, that problem would be overcome.
