On June 26, the Illinois legislature sent SB 439 to the Governor. It lets municipalities use Instant-Runoff Voting for foreign absentee ballots. The Governor has two months to sign or veto it.
Reply
South Carolina permits fusion. On June 27, the State Election Commission refused to certify Eugene Platt for the November ballot as a candidate for the State House, 115th district, even though both the Green Party, and the Working Families Party, nominated him in May at their state conventions. The problem is that Platt also ran in the June Democratic primary, and narrowly lost that primary. State law seems to say that if a candidate seeks the nomination of several parties, and fails to get all of them, then he is entirely barred from the general election ballot. Platt will probably filed a lawsuit soon.
South Carolina permits fusion. On June 27, the State Election Commission refused to certify Eugene Platt for the November ballot as a candidate for the State House, 115th district, even though both the Green Party, and the Working Families Party, nominated him in May at their state conventions. The problem is that Platt also ran in the June Democratic primary, and narrowly lost that primary. State law seems to say that if a candidate seeks the nomination of several parties, and fails to get all of them, then he is entirely barred from the general election ballot. Platt will probably filed a lawsuit soon.
This year, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in Florida, and a Republican candidate for the same office in the same state, both failed to qualify for the September 2008 primary ballot, because of paperwork errors. Both sued. However, on June 16, a Florida state court ruled against them, and the candidates aren’t appealing.
Larry Byrnes, a Democrat in the 14th district, filed his first paperwork in July 2007. He then circulated petitions in lieu of the filing fee, and obtained enough valid signatures. But because he inadvertently signed a Declaration of Candidacy to be a write-in candidate in the general election, instead of an application to be on the primary ballot, he was disqualified.
The lawsuit turned on the definition of “furnish”. The law says the Secretary of State shall furnish the proper forms. But the judge said that since all the forms were on the Secretary of State’s webpage, that satisfied the obligation to “furnish” the forms. Byrnes v Department of State, Leon Co. Circuit Court, 2008-CA-1615. The results were almost identical in the lawsuit filed by the Republican candidate, Bob Hering, running in the 8th district.
Supporters of Instant-Runoff Voting submitted enough valid signatures to place an initiative on the ballot in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently. The initiative asks if the voters want to use IRV to elect city officers. But the City Council refuses to put it on the ballot, because the City Attorney says the Minnesota Constitution does not permit cities to choose IRV for their own elections. The City Attorney’s reasoning is suspect, since Minneapolis voters were permitted to vote in the same question in 2006. Minneapolis voters passed the IRV initiative, but it has not been used yet because a lawsuit was filed to try to stop it. See this article.
No one would dream of telling a state legislature, or a city council, that it could not vote on whether to pass a law or an ordinance. When state legislature and city councils pass unconstitutional legislation, the normal solution is to let the legislative body act, and then bring the lawsuit. By analogy, when the voters succeed in getting an initiative on the ballot, the voters should be allowed to vote. Only then should the issue of the measure’s constitutionality be considered.