On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to hear the Texas redistricting cases. Oral argument be on March 1, 2006. The issue is whether anything in the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from redrawing U.S. House districts in the middle of the decade for openly partisan reasons. The news was surprising and exciting. The Court had been pondering whether to take this case since October 2005. Technically, there are 4 cases combined, numbers 05-204, 05-254, 05-276 and 05-439.
On December 10, the Oregon Democratic Party state committee narrowly rejected a proposal to invite registered independents to vote in the Democratic primary.
On December 10, the Oregon Democratic Party state committee narrowly rejected a proposal to invite registered independents to vote in the Democratic primary.
On December 10, former U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy died. He was a pioneer in the cause of making U.S. elections freer. In December 1974 he declared as an independent presidential candidate in 1976. He insisted, as a matter of principle, that he was an independent, and would not create any new party, in any state, just to help get on the ballot. At the time, 14 states (Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah) had no procedures for an independent presidential candidate. McCarthy sued almost all of those states and forced them all to pass such procedures. The US Supreme Court itself put him on in Texas, even though he did not submit any signatures there (since there was no procedure to do that). McCarthy was also a participant in the lawsuit Buckley v Valeo, which struck down parts of the 1974 federal campaign finance law that set a ceiling on expenditures in federal elections.
The national Libertarian Party’s ballot access fund has been in debt since 2004, but thanks to a recent fund appeal to the party’s national membership, the fund is now only $2,000 in debt, and donations are still coming in. The New Mexico Libertarian Party is the only state Libertarian party that has done any substantial petitioning on its own in the last six months.
