Arkansas HB 1509, which slightly expands the use of Instant-Runoff voting, passed the House unanimously on Feb. 21. Current law lets overseas military voters use Instant-Runoff ballots in primaries. HB 1509 expands this to all voters who are out of the country, civilians and military alike.
The pending lawsuit filed by Unity08 against the Federal Election Commission will move fairly quickly. All briefs will have been submitted by May 11, 2007. The issue is whether individuals can give Unity08 as much money as they wish, or are limited to what individuals can give to a national committee of a political party ($25,000), or whether they can only give $5,000. The FEC took the most restrictive position ($5,000).
On February 20, the West Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear McClure v Manchin, the Libertarian Party’s 2004 lawsuit against the May petition deadline for non-presidential petitions. As a result, all minor parties are stuck with a system in which all the party’s nominees can be listed on a single petition, but that petition is due in May. The presidential petition is due in August. But the two separate deadlines means that a party can’t do a petition for all its nominees if it relies on the August deadline.
The lower court decision in this case was very unthoughtful. The lower court ruled that the state needs all that time to check the petition. That is obviously not true, because the state has no trouble checking presidential petitions that are due in August.
HR 328, the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to give a new seat to Utah and a seat to the District of Columbia, is likely to get a vote in the House in March, according to an item in the Washington Post of February 22. Although a recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service says the bill is unconstitutional, there are other legal experts who say it is constitutional. Ken Starr is one of those experts. Anyway, Congress may feel that the constitutionality issue can’t be decided unless Congress passes the bill. Federal courts can’t issue advisory opinions; they can only act if the bill passes and someone sues to overturn it. Proponents of the bill depend on Article One, sec. 8, which says, “The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District.”
Georgia will probably not hold its special congressional election in the 10th district (to replace Charlie Norwood) until June 19. A previous posting on this site was incorrect when it said the election had to be no later than March 25.
The reason for the delay, is that several Georgia state legislators want to run for the seat, and under Georgia law, if they file as candidates, they must then resign from the legislature. Delaying the election until June 19 will enable these legislators to continue in office for most of this year’s legislative session.
