On May 27, Louisiana HB 776 was defeated in the House Committee on the House and Government Affairs, by a vote of 13-4. Thanks to Randall Hayes for this news. HB 776 would have eliminated congressional primaries for qualified parties with registration under 40,000 members.
The hearing lasted 90 minutes. Representatives of the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the NAACP, and the College Republicans, all testified against the bill.
Here is the rebuttal brief of the NAACP (in the U.S. Supreme Court) in NAACP v Billups, 08-1231. The issue is the constitutionality of Georgia’s law requiring voters at the polls to show a goverment photo-ID card. This current round of briefs is to determine whether the Supreme Court will hear the case. Especially interesting is footnote 1, comparing the Georgia ID law with the Indiana ID law.
The Supreme Court will consider whether to hear this case at its June 4 conference.
Late on the evening of May 27, the Texas legislature passed HB 1193, which relaxes the deadline for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The old deadline was not met by either the Democratic nor Republican Parties in 2008, but the Secretary of State placed their nominees on the November ballot anyway. HB 1193 sets the deadline as one business day after the national convention of any qualified party adjourns.
On May 26, Maine LD 1169 passed the legislature. Among other things, it includes these provisions to improve conditions for write-in candidates: (1) the names of all Declared write-in candidates will be posted at polling place locations; (2) voters no longer need to write-in the town or city of the candidate; (3) the form that the local elections officials fill out, listing how many votes were received in that precinct by each candidate, will include the names of the declared write-in candidates.
Herb Hoffman, independent candidate for U.S. Senate last year who was removed from the ballot and had to conduct a write-in campaign, deserves the credit for these provisions of the bill.
The Arizona Secretary of State has submitted proposed election law changes to the legislature, including changes concerning the two issues won by Ralph Nader in the 9th circuit last year. The Secretary of State asks the legislature to move the independent presidential candidate petition deadline to only 60 days before the general election, but only for independent presidential candidates. Independent candidates for other office would still need to submit their signatures by early June.
Also, the Secretary of State proposed that only independent presidential petition drives be allowed to use out-of-state circulators. Independent candidates for office other than president, and initiatives, would still be required to use only in-state circulators. Since the state’s entire defense of the residency requirement was that out-of-staters cannot be located if they commit fraud, the Secretary of State’s proposal seems inconsistent. For independent presidential petitions, the proposed amendment says that out-of-staters must register with the Secretary of State before starting work.
