On July 26, a Diageo-Hotline Poll was released. 801 voters were sampled July 19-22. The Republican results: Giuliani 20%, F. Thompson 19%, McCain 17%, Romney 8%, Brownback 4%, Paul 2%, Huckabee 1%, Tancredo 1%, T. Thompson 1%, Hunter under 1%, other and undecided 27%.
Democratic results: Clinton 39%, Obama 30%, Edwards 11%, Kucinich 3%, Richardson 2%, Biden 2%, other and undecided 13%.
See here for the California Secretary of State’s explanation of the report issued by her on July 27, concerning security flaws in vote-counting machines used in California.
On July 26, the North Carolina House passed SB 353 on second reading by a vote of 62-47. It provides that each U.S. House district will choose its own presidential elector. The bill will probably pass on 3rd reading by the same margin, very soon. If this bill had been in effect in North Carolina in 2000, Al Gore would have more votes in the electoral college than George Bush would have won. This is because Gore carried three U.S. House districts in North Carolina (the 1st, 4th and 12th districts), so Gore would have had 3 electoral votes from North Carolina and Bush would have had 3 fewer electoral votes from that state. The national total would then have been Gore 269, Bush 268, one abstention from the District of Columbia. It is likely the D.C. elector who abstained in 2000 would have voted for Gore, since she was a Democrat.
On July 22, the final brief was filed in the 6th circuit in Citizens for Tax Reform v Deters, no. 07-3031. This is the case over whether Ohio can outlaw the practice of paying initiative circulators per signature. The lower court had ruled the law unconstitutional.
On July 19, the city of Modesto, California, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear City of Modesto v Sanchez, 07-88. The city argues that the California Voting Rights Act violates the U.S. Constitution. The California Voting Rights Act requires Modesto to stop using winner-take-all citywide elections to choose its 5-member city council. Since 1911, only one Hispanic city councilmember has been elected in Modesto, even though 25% of the city’s population is Hispanic. That fact pattern triggers the state law. The state law will force the city to use another election system, unless the city can persuade the U.S. Supreme Court that the California law violates the 14th amendment.
