The California legislature resumes its session on Monday, August 17. Among the bills that will probably move ahead are those to establish the Indirect Initiative, to tell independent voters that they may vote in either the Democratic, Republican, or American Independent primary, to outlaw paying circulators on a per-signature basis, to let a few non-charter cities or counties use Instant Runoff Voting for their own elections, and to deregulate the Democratic Party.
A year ago, a group of Tulsa, Oklahoma voters submitted an initiative petition, hoping to get a public vote on their idea for converting Tulsa elections from partisan elections to non-partisan elections. Tulsa is one of the few cities in Oklahoma that uses partisan city elections. On August 11, John Eagleton, an incumbent city councilmember, challenged the petition. See this story.
South Carolina is one of the states that must get U.S. Justice Department approval before it changes any election law. On August 14, the ACLU sued South Carolina on behalf of the United Citizens Party, under the Voting Rights Act. During the Green Party litigation in South Carolina, the public and the attorneys learned that in April 2008, South Carolina’s Election Commission had changed its interpretation of a state law that requires a candidate for a partisan office in a primary to file a declaration of candidacy. The old interpretation was that a candidate seeking the nomination of two or more parties only had to file one declaration of candidacy. The new, more restrictive, interpretation is that the candidate must file a declaration of candidacy for each party.
The lawsuit says that South Carolina should have asked for U.S. Justice Department approval for this change, but failed to do so. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news. The new lawsuit is Gray v South Carolina State Election Commission, 3:09-cv-02126.
On August 13, the 5th Circuit agreed with a lower court that public schools may prohibit students from wearing T-shirts with a campaign slogan. The student was forbidden in 2007 from wearing a T-shirt to school that said, “John Edwards for President ’08”. The case is Palmer v Waxahachie Independent School District, 08-10903. The school forbade all T-shirts with messages of any kind, so the judges felt the restriction is content-neutral.
The South Carolina Green Party will appeal its lawsuit over fusion to the 4th circuit. Yesterday the U.S. District Court had ruled against the party. South Carolina permits fusion, but says if a minor party nominee tries to get a major party nomination as well, and fails to win the major party primary, then the candidate can’t even keep his or her original minor party nomination and can’t run at all in November. Thanks to Gene Platt for this news.
