The U.S. Senate Rules Committee held a hearing on S1905 on September 19. One can read the statements of the 4 witnesses at this link. Three witnesses testified in favor of S1905, which tells the states and the major parties when to hold their presidential primaries and caucuses. One witness, Political Science Professor William Mayer, testified against it. The most interesting part of the Mayer testimony is the last third, which documents that the random selection of which region of the country goes first, would have a big impact on which individual is nominated. For example, he makes a strong case that Bill Clinton would not have been nominated by the Democratic Party in 1992 if S1905 had been in existence at that time, and if the random drawing of regions put the South last.

The Rules Committee link to the actual verbal transcript of the hearing itself (which would include questions and comments by the Senators) should be posted in a week. The existing link to the transcript actually refers to a completely different hearing on another subject, held in June 2007. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.

Alan Greenspan’s new book, The Age of Turbulence, published earlier this month, contains these quotes: “The eventual dominance of the Republicans in southern state politics brought the two major parties to numerical parity but, in the process, induced an ideological divide between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. It has left a vast untended center from which a viable, well-financed independent presidential candidate could conceivably emerge in 2008, or, if not then, in 2012.”

Also, “I often wonder if a ticket of a Republican for president and a Democrat for vice-president, or the reverse, would attract the vast untended center. Perhaps this issue wouldn’t matter if the world were at peace…but that has not been the case since 9/11. Who holds the reins of government matters.”

The Arkansas Libertarian Party has 1,964 signatures on its petition to qualify the party for the presidential ballot. Only 1,000 are required. The party will turn them in before the end of the month. This will be the first petition that any minor party will have submitted, the entire calendar year of 2007, so far. Although the Constitution Party of Missouri has also finished its petition, it can’t turn in the signatures until it finishes choosing its nominees, so that petition probably won’t be turned in until October.