Here is a link to the Texas Secretary of State’s election results page. It is updated every five minutes. In the 14th district US House results, Ron Paul is leading his only opponent better than 2:1.

In the Texas Democratic presidential primary, the vote is very close, although Hillary Clinton is leading by about 20,000 votes. By coincidence, John Edwards (whose name remained on the ballot even though he withdrew earlier) is polling about 20,000 votes. Will anyone label John Edwards a “spoiler” and castigate him for not having withdrawn his name from the ballot?

Alaska Representative Max Gruenberg has introduced HB 402, to change the definition of “political party”. The current definition is irrational. There is a 3% vote test, and an alternate 3% registration test. The alternate registration test is not based on the share of the number of registered voters, but instead on the last vote cast. Since the number of votes in a presidential election is typically 30% greater than in a gubernatorial election, that means the number of registered voters needed for a party to attain, or keep, ballot status, goes up and down wildly. For example, right now a party needs 7,124 registrants, but after the November 2008 election, it will probably need 10,500 or so.

UPDATE: it turns out the bill was drafted badly. Rep. Gruenberg had no intention of wiping out the voter registration test. The bill will be amended.

HB 402 says a “party” is a group that polled 5,000 votes in the last election for a particular office. If it is a gubernatorial election year, then the party needs to poll 5,000 votes for Governor. If it is a presidential election year, it needs to poll 5,000 for U.S. Senate. If U.S. Senate is not up, then it needs to poll 5,000 for U.S. House.

5,000 votes would be approximately 2% of the 2006 vote.

In 2007, the Hawaii legislature passed SB 1956, the National Popular Vote Plan, but the Governor vetoed it.

In 2008, new bills have been introduced in both houses, and have passed all committees in both houses. The new bills are HB 3013 and SB 2898. The House bill passed the House Judiciary Committee on February 5, and the Senate bill passed the Senate committee on February 6. Both bills are expected to pass their respective chambers soon.

Democrats have more than two-thirds of the members of each chamber. The only reason the Governor’s veto was not overriden in 2007 was that some legislators went home early at the end of the 2007 legislative session, so they weren’t available to vote.