On September 22, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp to honor former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. Other justices who have served during the last 40 years who have already had postage stamps in their honor are Thurgood Marshall and Hugo Black. All three of these justices were almost always favorable votes for fair ballot access laws.
The Election Law Committees of both houses of the Massachusetts legislature are now voting on HB 656, which would let the Governor appoint someone to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat. Current law says there should be a special election approximately five months after the vacancy occurs. HB 656 would not change the special election rules, but it would say that the Governor could appoint someone to serve until the special election would be held.
The bill says the Governor must appoint someone from the same party as the person whose death or resignation had caused the vacancy. It doesn’t provide what to do if the U.S. Senator was an independent. See this story about the committee voting process, which must be complete by 11 p.m. on September 16. If the bill passes the Committees, it might get a vote in each House on September 17.
A former official of the Democratic Party kindly telephoned Ballot Access News to explain why the party’s national convention officials sent a different version of the national convention nominee certification form to Hawaii than to the other states. As noted earlier, the Democratic certification to Hawaii says the nominees for President and Vice-President are constitutionally qualified, and the certifications to the other states didn’t contain that language.
Democrats sent a different version of their Hawaii certificate because Hawaii election law, section 11-113(c)(1), says that officials of a ballot-qualified party must file a sworn application with the names and addresses of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees, and a statement that each candidate is legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Section 11-113(c)(1)(C) also requires a statement that the candidates are the duly chosen candidates of both the state and the national party. Therefore, it is plausible that the Hawaii law only applies to the state party officials, not the national party officials. But the law is ambiguous, and the Democratic national convention officers felt it was best to be cautious and assume the law applies to the national certification form. Therefore, after the 2008 Democratic national convention, the party prepared one particular type of form for Hawaii, and a simpler, shorter form for the other states.
During July 2009, Meg Whitman, a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor of California, was interviewed by George Will. Will reported that Whitman favored shrinking the number of Assembly districts in California. At the time, this seemed odd, because California has only 80 Assembly districts, so each Assemblymember represents over 400,000 constituents. Many Californians are frustrated because an ordinary voter has little or no chance to communicate with his or her Assemblymember. Whitman has since clarified that she does not, in fact, desire to reduce the number of Assembly districts in California.
On September 14, former Congressman John R. Rarick died in St. Francisville, Louisiana, at the age of 85. He had been the American Independent Party’s presidential candidate in 1980. He had served in Congress as a Democrat from Louisiana between 1967 and 1975. He endorsed George Wallace for President in 1968, and the Democrats in Congress, in retaliation, removed his seniority.
The American Independent Party had nominated Rarick for president on August 30, 1980, in Sacramento, California. Because Rarick was nominated so late in 1980, he only appeared on the ballot in the states in which the American Independent Party already enjoyed status as a qualified party; except that he also qualified in his own state of Louisiana, which only required paying a filing fee of $500 by early September. He was credited with 41,268 votes nationwide and was on the ballot in 8 states. Thanks to Peter Gemma for this news.
