On July 29, Texas U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said she will resign from the Senate in October or November 2009, in order to prepare to run for Governor in 2010. She had last been elected to the Senate in 2006.
Therefore, Texas will hold a special election for U.S. Senate on May 8, 2010. No petition is needed for special elections in Texas, so anyone who pays a filing fee can be on the May 2010 ballot, with a party label. If no one gets 50%, a run-off will be held on June 2.
According to this story, over 100 people rallied in New York city to hear City Councilmember Bill De Blasio call for ballot access reform.
Some of the quotations from the rally suggest that the speakers don’t know the history of ballot access laws. One speaker tied Boss Tweed to restrictive ballot access laws. But when Boss Tweed was in power in New York city, there were no government-printed ballots. Back in the 1870’s and 1880’s, voters were free to make their own ballots, so no one could be kept from running. The first government-printed ballots in New York were created in 1890, but the technicalities that make petitioning so hazardous in that state were not added until the early 20th century.
A South Dakota state court will soon decide if a referendum has enough valid signatures. Proponents of the referendum submitted 25,400 signatures to meet a legal requirement of 16,776. However, approximately 2,000 signatures were notarized by notaries who wrote down an incorrect date for when their seal expires. If those signatures are considered invalid, the referendum will fail to qualify.
The purpose of the referendum is to ask for a popular vote on a ban on smoking in bars and casinos. The case is Trucano v Nelson, 32-civ 09-306, pending in the 6th district Circuit Court.
Probably the voters of Tulsa, Oklahoma, will vote on November 10, 2009, whether to switch the city’s partisan elections to non-partisan elections. See this story. The initiative (to provide for non-partisan elections) needs 3,427 signatures. Over 6,000 signatures were submitted. As far as is known, Tulsa is the only city in Oklahoma that holds partisan elections for its own officers.
On July 28, proponents of a Referendum in Washington state asked a U.S. District Court to protect the privacy of the people who signed their petition. The case is Protect Marriage Washington v Reed, 3:09-cv-0546. The case was assigned to Judge Benjamin Settle, a Bush Jr. appointee. On July 29, Judge Settle issued a Temporary Restraining Order, preventing the names from being made public until the case is decided. See this story.
There has been few precedents on whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be considered a public record. Some states provide by law that the records are not public, but most states do not. The petition in this case is to prevent a new law from going into effect, to provide for civil unions for same-sex couples. No one knows yet if the petition has enough valid signatures. Proponents submitted 138,500 signatures. They need 120,577 valid signatures, so it seems somewhat likely the petition will fall short.
