On July 2, the Working Families Party of New York City held a forum for some candidates for Mayor. An audience of 400 people heard from Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Democrats Bill Thompson and Tony Avella. The Green Party candidate for Mayor, Rev. Billy Talen, was not permitted to address the meeting. See this story.
Free & Equal, and ReTea Party, are jointly sponsoring a rally in Chicago on July 4 to highlight speakers who are concerned about election law problems in Illinois and the United States. See this list of speakers. The rally is at Gateway Park at Navy Pier between noon and 4 p.m. Among the speakers are Theresa Amato, author of “Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny”; Paul Jacob, head of Citizens in Charge (an organization trying to expand the initiative process); and Christina Tobin, founder of Free & Equal.
Both the California State Senate Elections Committee, and the California Assembly Committee, had been expected to meet on Tuesday, July 7. Many election law bills of interest were on their agendas.
However, because of the California budget crisis, it is likely that both hearings will be cancelled. The legislature is not in session July 3-July 5, although legislative leaders continue negotiating a budget over that weekend. Assuming no budget will be in place on July 7, all non-budget legislative hearings are cancelled.
Bills of interest include AB 909, to provide that independent voters should be told at the polls on primary day that they may choose to vote in the Democratic, Republican or American Independent primaries; AB 1121, on letting 10 non-charter cities or counties use Instant Runoff Voting for their own elections; AB 6, on requiring firms that pay petition circulators to register with the Secretary of State; and SB 34, to outlaw paying circulators per-signature. All these bills had been set to be heard in one of the two committees on July 7.
Also stalled is AB 1396, to deregulate the Democratic Party’s internal structure. It has passed the Assembly and the Senate Elections Committee, but won’t receive a vote on the Senate floor until the budget is settled.
The July 2 New York Times print edition has this editorial, calling for various types of election law reform, including ballot access reform.
Atlanta TV station 11 has this report on Cynthia McKinney’s status in Israel. The story is also being covered in USA Today.
