Two election law-related bills in Congress continue gaining co-sponsors. HR 2499, to set a plebescite on Puerto Rico’s future political status, now has 181 co-sponsors, up eleven since September 29.
HR 1826, for public funding of Congressional campaigns, now has 101 co-sponsors, up eleven since September 29.
On October 22, Thursday, the Connecticut legislature will hold an informational hearing on to discuss whether the public funding law should be amended, to eliminate or reduce the parts of the law that discriminate against minor party and independent candidates. See this story. The hearing is before the Government Administration and Elections Committee.
The attorney for the Georgia Secretary of State has won permission from the 11th Circuit to file a brief in Coffield v Handel, the case challenging Georgia’ ballot access requirements for independent candidates for U.S. House. The state’s brief had been due on September 17, and the state failed to meet this deadline.
Georgia requires a petition of 5% of the number of registered voters for an independent candidate for U.S. House to get on the ballot. Georgia requires a similar petition for minor parties, even those that are qualified statewide, unless that party polled 20% of the vote for President in the entire nation, or unless it polled 20% for Governor, at the last election. No one in Georgia has completed the 5% petition for U.S. House since 1964. All candidates and parties that have tried, have failed, even when they have submitted double the requirement. The rate of invalid signatures is always very high, because so many well-meaning voters sign the petition even though they don’t live in the appropriate district, and of course those signatures are invalid. There have been bills to ease the requirements in six sessions of the legislature in the past 20 years to ease these requirements, but they never pass.
On October 11, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 1396. It repeals sections of the Election Code that tell the Democratic Party who should be on its State Central Committee, and when and how county central committees elect members to the State Central Committee, and that members should be divided as equally as possible between men and women, and how to fill vacancies.
A similar bill, deregulating similar provisions for the Republican Party, had been signed into law in 2007.
Similar laws still exist in the California election law that relate to how the American Independent Party, and the Peace & Freedom Party, should be structured. Parties that qualified in the 1980’s and 1990’s have never had their rules in the Election Code, except that when they qualified, they were required to choose one of the organization schemes for one of the parties that did have rules in the Code. Those parties (Libertarian, Green, Natural Law, Reform) all chose the Peace & Freedom plan.
On October 11, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 34, which would have made it illegal for initiative petitioners to be paid on a per-signature basis. He had vetoed the same bill last year as well.
He signed AB 30, which permits 17-year-olds to fill out a voter registration form and file it with elections officials. Such “pre-registered” voters could still not vote until they are 18. This bill is considered significant because it enables high school seniors to receive a blank registration form from their school, and to use it, so that the rate at which young people register will likely increase.
