On March 22, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-Il.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) introduced S936. It is called the “Fair Elections Now Act.” It provides for public funding for congressional candidates. It supposedly is modeled on the Maine and Arizona “Clean Elections” Laws. However, unlike the Maine and Arizona laws, S936 discriminates in favor of Democratic and Republican candidates, and against all others. If one is a Democrat or Republican, one only needs 2/3rds as many qualifying $5 contributions to qualify for public funding as all others need.

It is difficult to understand how Durbin and Specter can include such a provision, when the voters elected two independents to the U.S. Senate last November.

Bills have been introduced in both houses of the Alabama legislature to provide that write-in candidates must file a write-in declaration of candidacy, in order to have their write-ins tallied. They are SB69 and HB332. Currently, all write-ins in Alabama are valid and must be counted, but in practice, such write-ins generally don’t get canvassed. In 2006 the Alabama Secretary of State for the first time included all the write-ins in the official state returns, but she didn’t tally them. Anyone who wanted to know how many write-in votes were received by, for example, Loretta Nall (Libertarian candidate for Governor) had to add up her tally from each of the 67 counties. Presumably, if these bills pass, the Secretary of State will then tally the write-in totals for declared write-in candidates.

Unfortunately, the bills require the write-in declaration of candidacy to be filed 90 days before the election. That is poor policy; one of the chief reasons write-ins are allowed, is to take advantage of last-minute events, and a 90-day cut-off defeats part of the purpose of having write-in space on ballots.