The July 15 issue of National Journal has this interesting article about voting rights for citizens who live in the District of Columbia. The article mentions Congressmember Dana Rohrabacher’s HR 665, which would provide that for voting in Congressional elections, D.C. would be deemed to be part of Maryland, so that Maryland would have an additional U.S. House seat.
On July 15, the U.S. Senate Rules Committee unanimously passed S.1415, a bill to make it easier for overseas voters to vote. The bill requires that states mail ballots to overseas absentee ballots no later than 45 days before the election. It also requires states to let such voters request a ballot electronically. It countermands any state law that requires an overseas absentee ballot to be notarized.
S.1415 has 21 Senator sponsors or co-sponsors, including 5 Republicans. The contents of the bill will probably be amended into the Department of Defense funding bill later this month. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news. The bill can be read at http://thomas.loc.gov, although links don’t work. That site has a window in which the bill number can be typed, which takes one to the bill.
On July 13, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1123, which requires all cities in Arizona to use non-partisan elections for their own city officers. See this story. Tucson is the only city in Arizona that uses partisan elections. One Tucson city councilmember is already talking about suing the state, on the grounds that under the State Constitution, each city has a right to decide how it will hold its own elections. UPDATE: here is an editorial from Tucson’s daily newspaper of July 15, attacking the bill.
According to this article, the Alberta Green Party has lost its status as a qualified party because it was late filing its campaign finance report. The party said internal discord prevented it from gathering the data.
On July 13, U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen O’Malley ruled that the city of Euclid, Ohio, should use Limited Voting in its school board elections. The decision, USA v Euclid City School Board, is here.
Euclid has a 5-member School Board, and the city has long used at-large elections for the School Board. Voters elect 3 members in years after presidential elections, and 2 members in years before presidential elections. Euclid’s population is 44.6% African-American, yet no African-American has ever been elected to the School Board. The U.S. Department of Justice had sued Euclid under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and had asked the judge to order single-member districts. The city argued for either Limited Voting or Cumulative Voting. The judge ruled in favor of Limited Voting.
Limited voting means that each voter can only vote for one candidate, even though either two or three candidates are being elected. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link to the decision.
