The website Smerconish.com has my essay on why sore loser laws don’t apply to presidential primaries. See it here.
24
On March 28, Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court did not release any election law decisions, although it did release one non-election law opinion. It had been thought that some redistricting opinions might be released on March 28.
Although the bill to restore the initiative in Mississippi had seemed dead last week, there is a move to suspend the rules and save it. See this story.
On March 17, the Hawaii House Judiciary & Hawaiian Affairs Committee passed SB 141. It provides that if a presidential elector doesn’t vote for the presidential candidate who carried the state’s popular vote in November, he or she is replaced.
On the same day, the same committee also passed SB 47, which changes the order of candidates’ names on ballots from alphabetical (by surname) to random.
California law includes a ban on public funding for campaigns, either by the state, or by any local government. The ban exists because of an initiative that the voters passed some years ago.
State Senator Tom Umberg (D-Villa Park) has introduced SB 24, which would make repeal of that prohibition possible. If the bill passes, the voters would be asked to vote on repealing the ban. In California, when an initiative passes, the legislature cannot later change that initiative without another vote of the people, unless the original initiative itself authorized the legislature to change it without another popular vote.