On November 23, the Detroit news condemned the Michigan Supreme Court for upholding a discriminatory law on which parties may obtain the list of presidential primary voters. See that editorial here. On November 25, the Record-Eagle of Traverse City printed an editorial voicing the same sentiments. See it here.
At the November 6, 2007 election, two Working Families Party nominees for Hartford, Connecticut, city council, were elected. They are Luis E. Cotto and Larry Deutsch.
Hartford, like some other Connecticut and Pennsylvania cities and counties, as well as Washington, D.C., provides that for certain multi-winner elections, no political party may run a full slate. Hartford was electing nine city councilmembers (at large), but provides that no political party may run more than six nominees. At the November 2007 election in Hartford, 6 Democrats, 1 Republican, and 2 Working Families Party nominees were elected.
A spate of newspaper articles on November 22 report that New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg has hired an expert on foreign policy to advise him. This, of course, has led to more speculation that Bloomberg may yet run as an independent for president next year. Here is one story.
On November 24, Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon, a Democrat, said he expects to bring HB 4507 up for a vote in the Michigan House on Monday, November 26. This bill changes the criteria for listing candidates in major party presidential primaries. The existing law requires such candidates to file. The bill alters this, so that the Secretary of State automatically places presidential candidates on the ballot if they are mentioned in the news media as candidates. No one may withdraw unless he or she swears to not being a candidate.
If this bill passes, it will have the effect of adding such candidates as Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson to the Michigan Democratic ballot. They had not filed because the Democratic National Committee considers the Michigan primary illegitimate because of its early (January 15) deadline.
The bill passed the Senate on November 8, but not with the required two-thirds to take effect immediately. If the bill passes the House with two-thirds on November 26, then it will return to the Senate for another vote. In the meantime, Michigan presidential primary ballots are still not being printed. When they are printed, the state will be in violation of a federal law that requires overseas absentee ballots to be mailed in time for those overseas voters to return their ballots in time to be counted.
On November 24, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and others were jailed for participating in a protest against Russian ballot access laws. Demonstrators are angry that Other Russia Party is barred from the ballot in the upcoming parliamentary elections. See this report. The new Russian ballot access law bars parties from the ballot unless they show that they have at least 50,000 members. The former law only required 10,000 members.
