The city of Modesto, California, is trying to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a California election law that will force Modesto to elect its city councilmembers by district. The California law is somewhat like the federal voting rights act, only it is stronger. Modesto will be forced to use districts to elect its city council because under the at-large system, virtually no Hispanics have ever been elected. Here is the brief of the organization opposed to the city. The case is City of Modesto v Sanchez, no. 07-88.

Unity08’s web page, www.unity08.com, has a blog section on the right-hand column. On September 14 the group posted its first detailed message about qualifying as a party. The posting shows that the group will concentrate first on Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Utah. The party has already completed the necessary work in Florida.

Unity08’s web page also changes each day, to show how many voters have signed up as members. The total seems to increase by about 100 per day, and as of September 17, is at 104,735.

Lincoln Chafee, who was elected to the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island as a Republican in 2000 and who was defeated for re-election in 2006, changed his registration from “Republican” to “Independent” back in June or July 2007. No one noticed until a few days ago. Here is one article about the reasons for his action. This year has seen at least three news-worthy Republicans change their registration from “Republican” to either independent voter status, or to a minor party; the others are Mayor Michael Bloomberg and John Frohnmayer.