Congressman Dennis Kucinich expects to appeal his lawsuit against the Texas Democratic Party to the U.S. Supreme Court. When Kucinich tried to run in the Democratic presidential primary in Texas last year, he was barred from the party’s primary ballot because he wouldn’t sign an oath to “fully support” whomever became the Democratic presidential nominee. The lower federal courts ruled in favor of the Texas Democratic Party. The last ruling, from the 5th circuit, was on March 24, 2009.
Two bills in South Carolina that would injure minor parties or independent candidates have not made enough headway to pass in calendar year 2009. They are H3746 and H3067.
H3746 would make it far more difficult to get independent candidates on the ballot, and H3067 would ban fusion. Either bill could pass in 2010, because South Carolina has two-year legislative sessions, but they won’t pass in 2009.
On May 11, the New York Senate Elections Committee will hold a hearing at the state capitol on several election law bills. Most election law bills introduced in New York never get a hearing. The bills getting heard on May 11 do not concern ballot access. They include S3250, to allow early voting; S5028, which would permit absentee voting for any reason; and S2443, which requires poll workers to inform voters who are not in the poll book for that precinct, which is the proper precinct for their address. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
Although the West Virginia legislature passed the ballot access improvement bill, HB 2981, on April 11, it was only on May 5 that the clerical staff of the legislature sent that bill to the Governor. He has until May 26 to sign it or not sign it. However, his office has already informally said he will sign it.
PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) has just released a 37-page study of voter registration. It recommends that the United States switch to a system in which voters are registered automatically, an idea already in place in Canada. PIRG hopes to eventually have such a bill introduced in Congress.
The study highlights how much tax money is spent now on voter registration, and makes the case that automatic registration would save tax dollars.
The idea will be difficult to implement. There is no single government database that tells who is a citizen and who is not. Also it is not easy, in states which bar ex-felons from registering, to know about that variable. And because 29 states ask voters to choose a party on the voter registration form, even if automatic registration were implemented, there would be extra work involved in handling that question. Also, if the database is based on residence, that leaves the problems of homeless people, and also makes it difficult to administer situations in which some people have more than one residence.
