On February 26, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Washington State’s appeal of the “top-two” primary case. The voters of Washington state had passed that type of primary in November 2004. But in 2005 the U.S. District Court had ruled it unconstituitonal, and the 9th circuit agreed last August. The case is Washington v Republican Party, 06-730.
Louisiana held special elections in three state house seats on Saturday, February 24.
In the 40th district in the central part of the state (St. Landry Parish), five Democrats and one independent, Bradford Jackson, ran. Jackson came in third with 19.6%. The top two vote-getting Democrats will now face off in a run-off. At the last regularly-scheduled election for this district (all Louisiana legislative districts were last up on October 4, 2003), only Democrats had run.
In the 1st district in the northwest part of the state, 3 Republicans and 2 Democrats ran. One of the Republicans, Jim Morris, was elected outright with 69.4%. At the October 2003 election, only Democrats had run for this seat.
In the 4th district, also in the northwest, only Democrats ran in the special election, just as only Democrats had run in this district in 2003.
Hawaii has a very unusual law for determining how a party remains on the ballot. If the party has been on for 3 elections in a row, then it is automatically qualified for the next 5 elections. But after the “free” 5 elections are up (unless it had polled 10% for a statewide office or either US House seat, or 4% for half the races in either house of the legislature, or 2% for half of the legislative races in both houses), then it goes off the ballot.
The Green Party’s 5 “free” elections are up, so the party must submit 663 signatures to re-qualify for 2008. If the party doesn’t meet the vote test in 2008 or 2010, it will probably need similar petitions in 2010 and 2012. Then it will again qualify automatically for 2014 through 2022.
On February 23, California Assemblymen Gene Mullin and Mark Leno introduced AB 1294. It would let any city or county choose to use Instant-Runoff voting for its own elections. Currently, only chartered cities and chartered counties may do so without state approval.
Back on August 23, 2006, the 3rd circuit ruled adversely in the Pennsylvania ballot access lawsuit Rogers v Corbett. The issue was whether the state could force qualified parties to submit petitions for their nominees, even though those parties had fulfilled the 2% vote test at the previous election and therefore met the Pennsylvania definition of “political party”. Parties affected were the Green, Libertarian and Constitution Parties, all of which had met that statewide vote test in November 2004, and yet all of whom were being kept off the November 2006 ballot unless they submitted 67,070 signatures.
The parties asked for a rehearing, and that rehearing request is still pending, as of February 23. Generally, rehearing requests are rejected within a month or two after the initial decision, so there is some reason for optimism that the case will win a rehearing from the full 3rd circuit. Only full-time judges can vote on whether to grant a rehearing. The original decision was before one fulltime judge and two part-time judges, but those part-time judges have no vote on whether to grant the rehearing. The 3rd circuit has 10 full-time judges.
