On July 13, Washington, D.C. City Councilmember Mary Cheh eliminated a provision from her Omnibus Election Reform Act, bill number 18-345. She eliminated adding candidate filing fees to the election law.
The hearing on the bill, also on July 13, will include witnesses who will ask that the bill also be amended to ease the petitioning requirements for minor party and independent candidates for president.
On July 7, the California Senate Elections Committee passed AB 909. This is the bill that provides that independent voters, at the polls on primary day, must be told that they are free to choose a Republican ballot, a Democratic ballot, or an American Independent Party ballot. The vote was 3-1. Now it goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Post-Standard, daily newspaper of Syracuse, New York, has this good-natured and clear explanation of the details of petitioning in New York state. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The New Agenda is an organization started in 2008 that seeks to achieve opportunity for women by addressing issues which unite women, and by advancing women into leadership roles in the U.S. The New Agenda’s blog has this July 11 article about Lynne Williams, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for Governor of Maine.
The article’s lead sentence, “Lynne Williams is the only woman from a third party running on a gubernatorial ticket” is not well-thought out, but the remainder of the article is worth reading.
The Gotham Gazette has created an on-line computer board game, “Ballot Bump”. See it here. The game has three players, a Pigeon who wants to run in a major party primary without support from the party organization; a Heron who wants to run in a party primary with party support; and a Starling who wants to run as an independent.
Although the game seems to start as a maze, it really is a knowledge game. One advances one’s bird along the maze by correctly answering multiple-choice questions about the process of getting on the ballot.
