On September 14, the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution will hold a hearing on HR 5388, the bill to increase the size of the U.S. House by one (a seat which would go to Utah) and also give the District of Columbia a voting member.
On August 9, a California Superior Court in Sacramento will hear a case brought by several county units of the California Republican Party, to overturn section 8605 of the California Election Code. Sonoma County Republican Central Committee v McPherson, 06-cs-01078. The issue is whether the California Constitution (as amended in 2004) overrides the election code that requires a very large number of write-ins for anyone to be nominated by write-in votes at a party primary. The candidate-plaintiff in the case, Raylene Wiesner, received 687 votes in the June 2006 Republican primary for Assembly, 7th district. No one else received any votes for that position, but the Secretary of State won’t place her name on the November ballot because her write-in total was below 1,683 (1% of the vote for that office in the last general election).
The New York Times of July 31, 2006 has a lengthy story on Aaron Russo’s film “America: From Freedom to Fascism”. The story erroneously says “Russo sought the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 2004 but dropped out because of ill health.” Actually, Russo did seek that nomination actively, and did not drop out, and was instead defeated at the party’s national convention on the third ballot.
On July 25, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General instructed state elections officials to delete the “loyalty oath” on declarations of candidacy. The law, which was upheld in federal court in 1970, requires all candidates for state and local office to swear that they are not “subversive persons”.
The Attorney General acted after he was informed that the Socialist Workers Party was about to sue, to overturn the oath. In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously ruled that such candidate and political party oaths violate the First Amendment.
For the past several weeks, each signature on the Green Party’s statewide Illinois petition has been undergoing validation. The process is two-thirds done, and so far the Green validity rate is running above 75%, so it is very likely the petition will be ruled valid. 25,000 valid are required and Greens submitted 39,000.
