On July 4, Chelene Nightingale announced her candidacy for Governor of California in the American Independent Party primary. She is an activist on the issue of stopping aliens from entering the United States illegally. Here is her webpage. If she becomes the California AIP’s nominee, she will be its first female gubernatorial candidate since 1978, when Theresa Dietrich was the AIP gubernatorial nominee.
Several weeks ago, the Rhode Island Senate passed SB 203, the bill to lower the number of signatures for a new party. The bill still needs to go through the House. The House adjourned early in July, but House leaders intend to bring the House back into session sometime this summer. Currently, no one knows whether that will be in July or in August.
On July 7, the Obion County, Tennessee, Election Commission voted to sue the state of Tennessee. The county is upset because state law requires all counties, starting in 2010, to use vote-counting machines that have a paper trail. Obion County currently uses touch screen machines that have no paper trail. See this article. The county’s claim that no optical scan ballot system is available is puzzling, since hundreds of counties around the U.S. use optical scan ballots. Optical scan ballots are paper ballots that are read by scanning machines, so obviously optical scan ballots do leave a paper trail. They can be recounted by hand if necessary.
On July 6, both The Oregonian (Portland’s daily newspaper) and the Register-Guard (Eugene’s daily newspaper) ran an editorial, advocating that Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski sign SB 326. Here is the Oregonian’s editorial. The Register Guard’s editorial is here. The title is “Bill Restores Voters’ Rights and it Grants Minor Parties New Visibility.”
SB 326 is the bill that eliminates the ban on a primary voter signing an independent candidate’s petition. The bill also permits fusion. The Governor must sign or veto the bills by August 31. Thanks to Dan Meek for this news.
Mexico held a Congressional election on July 5, to fill all 500 seats. Although not all of the votes have been counted, it appears that the Green Party will have 25 seats in the new Congress, which takes office on September 1.
No party won a majority. The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has the most seats, 235. According to this article, it is possible the Greens will cooperate with the PRI to give that party a working majority (235 plus 25 equals 260, which is over half of 500). The National Action Party (PAN), the president’s party, has 153 seats. The Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has 75 seats. That still leaves 12 seats to be accounted for. Mexico uses Proportional Representation.
