South Carolina has always been an open primary state. Any registered voter is free to vote in any party’s primary. The Republican Party of Greenville County had filed a federal lawsuit against the open primary back on April 20, 2009, saying it wanted to exclude Democrats from voting in its primary. However, on August 14, 2009, the party voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit.
The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, will hear Unity08 v Federal Election Commission on October 15, 2009, at 9:30 a.m. The panel consists of Judges Douglas H. Ginsburg, Karen Henderson, and Stephen Williams. The issue is whether the FEC was correct when it told Unity ’08 in 2006 that no one could contribute more than $5,000.
Judges Ginsburg and Henderson were part of the panel that ruled that the U.S. Post Office could not ban petition circulators on post office sidewalks that are parallel to public streets, in 2005. That case was called Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service. The panel remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court to decide the other half of the case, interior sidewalks, and there is still no decision on that from the U.S. District Court.
Judge Henderson also was one of the judges in McConnell v FEC, and her May 2, 2003 concurring opinion in that case struck down limits on individual contributions to political party national committees (however, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld them later that year in a 5-4 decision).
The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, will hear Unity08 v Federal Election Commission on October 15, 2009, at 9:30 a.m. The panel consists of Judges Douglas H. Ginsburg, Karen Henderson, and Stephen Williams. The issue is whether the FEC was correct when it told Unity ’08 in 2006 that no one could contribute more than $5,000.
Judges Ginsburg and Henderson were part of the panel that ruled that the U.S. Post Office could not ban petition circulators on post office sidewalks that are parallel to public streets, in 2005. That case was called Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service. The panel remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court to decide the other half of the case, interior sidewalks, and there is still no decision on that from the U.S. District Court.
Judge Henderson also was one of the judges in McConnell v FEC, and her May 2, 2003 concurring opinion in that case struck down limits on individual contributions to political party national committees (however, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld them later that year in a 5-4 decision).
The September 14 U.S. edition of Metro has this story about Frances Villar’s campaign for Mayor of New York city. Villar is the candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Metro is an international daily newspaper published in 100 cities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In the U.S. it exists in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
The September 14 issue of the Patriot-News, the daily newspaper of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, explains why so few votes get cast in the county that contains Harrisburg, Dauphin County. See this article. Dauphin County uses Electec 1242B vote-counting machines. A voter who wishes to cast a write-in vote must first find the write-in button for the particular office. The voter pushes it, and then sees another button in another part of the machine that then begins flashing a red light. The voter pushes that button next, and that opens a small shutter, exposing a piece of paper within. The voter write-ins in that shutter, and must manually close the shutter.
In November 2006, Carl Romanelli, the write-in candidate for U.S. Senate for the Green Party, was only credited with 9 write-ins in Dauphin County, and the other statewide write-in candidates for the Green, Libertarian and Constitution Parties were not credited with any write-ins in Dauphin County.
The Patriot-News wrote this story because the incumbent Mayor of Harrisburg, Stephen Reed, is pondering whether to run a write-in campaign in November 2009 in order to stay in office. He lost the May 2009 Democratic primary.
