On July 21, the Arizona State Court of Appeals ruled that a trial should be held in Chavez v Brewer, 1 CA-cv-06-0575. The issue is whether the state’s electronic vote-counting machines produce accurate results. The lower court had refused to permit evidence-gathering. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news. The 29-page decision is here.
Filing for Minneapolis city elections closed on July 21. The city is using Instant-Runoff Voting for the first time this year. The election is November 3. There will be no September primary, as there always has been in the past. See this list of candidates and their party labels. Parties don’t nominate candidates in these elections, and the candidates choose their own labels. UPDATE: here is the city elections web page, which seems to show that anyone can get on the ballot for any city office by paying a fee of $20, with no petition needed. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Labels include Independence, Green, Libertarian, Socialist Workers, Socialist Action, Progressive, in addition to Democratic-Farmer-Labor and Republican.
Arizona releases new voter registration data each calendar quarter. The July 1 figures show that the only qualified party that has gained registration share since the April 1 tally is the Libertarian Party, which went from .656% to .686%. The party now meets the threshold for keeping its place on the ballot, which is two-thirds of 1%. However, the party must remain vigilant, because the tally that counts is the special November 1, 2009 tally, so the party must guard its share between now and then.
Independents rose from 28.50% to 28.93%. Republicans declined from 36.83% to 36.58%. Democrats declined from 33.88% to 33.67%. Greens were virtually unchanged, at .136% in both tallies. Greens are not conducting a registration drive, but instead are doing a petition drive, so as to remain on the ballot for 2010. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for this news.
On July 7, Jana Kemp declared that she will run for Governor of Idaho in 2010 as an independent candidate. She was a Republican state legislator after the 2004 election, but she had been defeated for re-election in 2006 by a Democrat. She needs 1,000 valid signatures and is already working on her petition.
She had formerly represented northwest Boise and Garden City. Her campaign is centered on education issues. She has written five books on management, meetings and consensus building. See this story. Here is her campaign webpage.
Alabama is one of the states that fills vacant legislative seats with a special election. However, it turns out that, in Alabama, when only one party nominates anyone for that special election, and no independent files, the party nominee is deemed to be the winner. See this story, which explains that Priscilla Dunn will be seated as the new State Senator from the 19th District because no other party nominated anyone.
