Massachusetts HB 678, the National Popular Vote Plan, cleared all House Committee hurdles on October 24, and will probably receive a vote on the House floor in the next ten days.
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The Illinois presidential primary is on February 5. November 5 is the petition deadline for candidates running in the Democratic presidential primary, and it is also the deadline for candidates running in the Green presidential primary. The Republican presidential primary deadline is December 5.
All presidential primary candidates in Illinois need 3,000 signatures on a petition. The Board will accept petitions with fewer signatures, and treat them as valid, but they are vulnerable to challenge. Traditionally, no one in Illinois challenges presidential primary petitions, even if they are obviously below the requirement.
Filing closes at 5 p.m. Illinois time. As of noon, no Green presidential primary petitions had been turned in, and only 4 Democratic presidential primary petitions had been turned in: Clinton, Edwards, Obama and Richardson. UPDATE: additional filings were made by Democrats Kucinich, Dodd and Biden.
Also, 4 Greens filed: Cynthia McKinney, Kent Mesplay, Jared Ball and Howie Hawkins. Hawkins is believed to be a stand-in for Ralph Nader.
On Sunday, November 4, Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri, a Republican, vetoed SB 1152. That bill moved the presidential primary from March to February. The Governor said he vetoed it because elections administrators had said changing the date of the primary at this late date would create great difficulties. He said in his veto message that he would have signed it if it had been sent to him earlier this year. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.
The Republican-backed initiative to provide that each California US House district would elect its own presidential elector, if passed in June 2008, would make it somewhat more complicated for an independent presidential candidate to get on the California ballot in November 2008. Current law requires an independent presidential candidate petition to list the names and addresses of 55 candidates for presidential elector. However, current law does not have a residence requirement for candidates for presidential elector, except that the electors must be California residents.
The initiative says that candidates for presidential elector must each live in the district that he or she hopes to represent. Therefore, an independent candidate for president would have the task of lining up a slate of candidates for presidential elector, one per US House district. This work must be done before the petitions are printed. California requires 158,372 valid signatures, to be obtained between April 2008 and August 8, 2008.
Political parties on the California ballot would also need to submit a list of presidential elector candidates, in accordance with the residency requirement imposed by the initiative, if the initiative gets on the ballot in June 2008 and passes. If passed, it would take effect as soon as the votes had been counted in June.
On November 1, the Florida presidential primary ballot candidates’ list was released. The list is the same as the Georgia list. The method of choosing candidates in both states is the same; the list is drawn up by the legislative leaders of that major party and the party state chair.
The 8 Democrats are Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama and Richardson. The 9 Republicans are Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, Keyes, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo and Thompson.
Alan Keyes is now in a strong position to be in future Republican presidential debates, since he has been listed in both Florida and Georgia by party leaders.