The Connecticut legislature will meet on December 15. Among other things, it will consider whether to revise the public funding law for candidates, to remove the discriminatory aspects of the law. This article, published December 13, explains the competing pressures on the legislature.
Hawaii has two members of the U.S. House of Representatives. One of them, Neil Abercrombie, has already announced that he will run for Governor in 2010. Not only that, he is planning to resign soon, because it is impossible for him to campaign for Governor while he is so far away in Washington, D.C.
However, the Hawaii Elections Office says it can’t afford to hold a special election to fill Abercrombie’s seat, and would leave it unfilled until mid-September, when the state is holding its regularly-scheduled primary for all partisan offices. Nothing in state law requires any state official to call a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House before September 2010. See this story.
The webpage www.redistrictingthenation.com is an excellent resource for people interested in congressional, legislative, and even local districts. One can type in an address and see each type of district for that address. The webpage also measures the compactness, on objective mathematical grounds, for any district in the nation. Also a feature lets visitors try their hand at creating new districts. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On December 10, a lower state court in Ohio ordered the Ashland County Commissioners to increase their funding for the County Board of Elections, from $302,510, to $328,286. See this story. The Board of Elections had argued that its ability to carry out elections in the county was jeopardized without more funding.
On December 11, the 9th circuit ruled that groups organized to pass a ballot measure may not be forced to disclose their internal campaign messages. The controversy arose over the California campaign for Proposition 8 last year. Proposition 8, an initiative, banned same-sex marriages. After the measure passed, its opponents filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that a ban on same-sex marriages violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
As the trial proceeded in U.S. District Court, proponents of same-sex marriages asked the U.S. District Court to order the other side to produce its internal memos on campaign strategy. The District Court said the internal memos should be produced, but the 9th circuit has now countermanded that order. The 9th circuit said, “The potential chilling effect on political participation and debate is substantial”. The 38-page decision is here, and is a useful document describing earlier precedents that have ruled in favor of political privacy. The earliest federal precedents are from the 1950’s, when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped several southern states from forcing the NAACP to produce its membership lists, and lists of people who had contributed to it. Thanks to HowAppealing for the link.
