On January 26, the U.S. Supreme Court denied yet another request for injunctive relief over whether President Obama meets the constitutional qualifications. Lightfoot v Bowen, 08A524. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
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This article says New York state is behind schedule in choosing new vote-counting equipment to replace its mechanical voting machines. New York state is the only state that still uses these machines. The state is in violation of federal law. The machines have only nine columns (or nine rows, depending on which style is in use). Because New York state uses the party-column (or party-row) ballot format, this forces the state to put two parties in the same column (or row). In November 2008, the state squeezed Ralph Nader’s Populist Party, and the Libertarian Party, into the same column, making it relatively difficult for voters to find either one.
Rhode Island Representative David Segal (D-Providence) has this op-ed in the New York Times of January 25. It advocates an end to gubernatorial appointments of U.S. Senators, and also advocates that special elections to fill U.S. Senate vacancies should skip the primary stage and use Instant-Runoff Voting. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.
Alabama Representative Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) has agreed to introduce a bill to lower the number of signatures needed for minor parties and non-presidential independent candidates. He has been in the legislature since 2003. Thanks to Steven Gordon for this news.
Tennessee law says that the political party holding a majority in the State House of Representatives is entitled to appoint a majority of the seats in each county’s Election Commission. That provision, in existence since 1870, has never been tested or applied because Republicans had never had a majority in the State House of Representatives. But in 2008 Republicans did gain a one-vote majority in the House. Now, county Election Commissioners are wondering about their status, as this interesting newspaper story explains.