On June 17, HB 420 passed the Louisiana Senate Committee on Senate & Governmental Affairs. It had already passed the House. It moves the independent presidential filing deadline three days later, and also makes the deadline for qualified parties to file their presidential paperwork somewhat less ambiguous.
New York election law has for decades contained a provision making it possible for a qualified political party to disenroll individual voters, if the party can show that the voters joined the party even though they are not in sympathy with its ideas.
The Suffolk County, New York Conservative Party is in the process of using this law to disenroll about 2,000 police officers and their families. The party believes that these officers enrolled in the party so as to influence its candidate selection process in the county sheriff’s race. Some of the police officers tried to enjoin the party from carrying out the steps needed under the law, but Supreme Court Justice Thomas Whelan ruled on June 11 that the case is not ripe. Instead, the police must wait until the party has finished the process of expulsion. Byrne v Walsh, 16947-09. Thanks to Jack Dean for this news.
Only two New York state election law bills are likely to be signed into law this year. One is A8501, which makes it much easier to use the local initiative process, but only for initiatives that would abolish local units of government, or permit two local government bodies to merge with each other. That bill passed the Senate on June 3, before the New York State Senate dissolved into disorder. The bill was sent to Governor David Patterson on June 12.
The other bill, S2810, was signed into law on May 26. It says an absentee ballot outer envelope should be accepted if the voter signed it using initials or common abbreviations for given names, such as “Wm.” for William. It’s unfortunate that the bill only applies to absentee ballot envelopes, and not petitions.
The bill to require voters to approve repeals of local term limits, A1224, passed the Assembly on June 16, but chances are won’t clear the Senate. The National Popular Vote bill, A1580, passed the Assembly Election Law Committee on June 17 and may yet pass the Assembly, but again the Senate is unlikely to take it up.
On June 16, Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.) again introduced his bill to mandate a paper trail for electronic vote-counting machines, in federal elections. The bill is HR 2894 and has 75 co-sponsors. This is the 4th session of Congress in which Holt has introduced this bill.
On June 17, the Florida Supreme Court voted 4-2 to strike down a 2007 law that lets voters remove their signatures on initiative petitions. UPDATE: Here is the court’s order. As a result, it is almost certain that the “Florida Hometown Democracy” initiative will qualify for the 2010 ballot. The case is Florida Hometown Democracy v Browning. The Court will issue its opinion later. See this story.
