On May 29, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed HB 487. It moves the presidential primary from March to February 5.
Reply
On May 24, the city council of Cary, North Carolina, voted 4-3 to use Instant-Runoff Voting for its city council elections on October 9. Four seats are up, two district and two at-large.
Cary’s official slogan is “The Technology Town of North Carolina.” It is near Raleigh. The town is responding to a bill passed last year that permits any ten cities or counties use IRV to elect their own officials. Cary expects to save $62,000, since it will not need to hold an old-fashioned run-off in November 2007.
As has been noted, the Illinois Senate had earlier passed a bill drastically easing ballot access for minor party candidates as well as fixing the constitutional infirmities with independent candidate ballot access. But the House had passed a bill that only fixes the constitutional problems with independent candidate ballot access. It is looking increasingly likely that the House approach will prevail.
The Illinois legislature is foolish not to fix problems with minor party ballot access. Existing law says the nominee of an unqualified party, and an independent, running for US House, needs only 5,000 signatures in years following redistricting. But in all other years, they need a petition of 5% of the last vote cast, which is sometimes as high as 14,000 or 15,000 signatures. It is likely that a new lawsuit will be filed, arguing that if 5,000 signatures is enough in years ending in the digit “2”, then there can be no strong state interest in having almost triple that number of signatures in other election years.
On May 25, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney participated in a 23-minute interview on Radio Station WBAI. The hosts asked her about the possibility that she may seek the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She said, “With the failure of the Democratic Congress to repeal the Patriot Act, the Secret Evidence Act, the Military Tribunals Act, I have to seriously question my relationship with the Democratic Party. The idea has not been ruled out. All the current Democrats running for president support the principle of potential military action against Iran; none of them is for impeachment of the President. They can’t speak for me. I am open to a lot of ideas in 2008.” Thanks to Darcy Richardson for this news.
On May 30, the Massachusetts Joint Election Law Committee will hear HB646 and SB446. Those bills provide for election-day registration. Eight states already have election-day registration: Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Also, North Dakota in effect has election-day registration, since it doesn’t have voter registration at all.