The December 9 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has this story about the pending decision of the U.S. Supreme Court over whether or not to hear Doe v Reed. That is the case over whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be made public or not.
The December 9 issue of The Ventura County Star has this interesting article on how ordinary citizens may apply to be on California’s redistricting commission. That body will draw the boundaries for legislative districts, after the 2010 census. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
Los Angeles has a 15-member city council. The city held a special election on December 8 to fill the vacant 2nd district seat. Assemblymember Paul Krekorian was elected. He has pledged to support Instant Runoff Voting for Los Angeles city elections. There will now be six members of the council who support IRV.
As a result of the election, there is now a vacancy in the California Assembly, which will be filled with a special election in the spring of 2010. The district is in the eastern San Fernando Valley.
In other California news about IRV, on December 8 the city council of San Leandro (in Alameda County) voted to postpone a decision on whether to use IRV for city elections until the Oakland city council makes a final decision on using IRV in its 2010 city elections. San Leandro is a charter city so it is free to use IRV for its own elections if it wishes to. The voters of San Leandro have never expressed themselves on the matter.
On November 8, Arkansas held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 4th district. The results: Republican Mike Lamoureux 70.09%, Democratic John Burnett 21.30%, independent Tachany Evans 8.61%.
When this seat has last been filled, in November 2008, only a Republican had run. When only one person runs, Arkansas removes the office from the ballot and the person is deemed elected, so there are no election results from 2008 per se. The district is northwest of Little Rock, and is centered around Russellville.
On November 30, one New Jersey legislator, Assemblymember John McKeon, had introduced A4271, to provide that when a vacancy occurs in the U.S. Senate, the Governor must appoint someone from the same party as the Senator who had just vacated the seat.
On December 8, another New Jersey legislator introduced a new bill on the same subject. This time the author is Assemblymember Joseph Cryan, who is state chair of the New Jersey Democratic Party. His A4339 says that no governor may ever appoint a U.S. Senator. Instead, the seat remains vacant until the state holds a special election to fill that vacancy. The bill number isn’t known yet. In the meantime, the earlier bill has not made any headway, even though the New Jersey legislature is in session.
The apparent reason for the interest in this subject is that soon New Jersey will have a Republican Governor being sworn in to office, and one of the U.S. Senators from New Jersey is 85 years old.
