The Houston Chronicle, the nation’s third largest newspaper by Sunday circulation, has endorsed Joseph LeBlanc for Texas U.S. House, 22nd district. LeBlanc is running against the Republican incumbent, Congressman Troy Nehls, and also against a Democrat, Jamie Kaye Jordan.
The Daily Texan, student newspaper for the University of Texas, carries this opinion piece advocating that no one ever vote for an independent candidate. The piece says that no independent has ever won an election in Texas. Actually, an independent was elected to the Texas legislature in a special election on August 2, 2016. She was Laura Thompson.
Also, another independent, Homer LaKirby Lenoard, was elected to the Texas legislature as an independent in 1936.
The piece says that a vote for an independent or third party never has any political effect. This is far from the truth. Votes for minor party or independent candidates are sometimes more powerful than votes for major party nominees. The Prohibition Party cost the Republicans the presidency in both 1884 and 1916. Those votes for Prohibitionists were very powerful. This outcome motivated the Republicans in Congress to pass the Prohibition Amendment in Congress in 1917. The amendment had been sitting in Congress since 1875 and had never before made any headway. But Republicans passed it, hoping that it would end any threat from future Prohibition Party campaigns. They still didn’t expect the states to ratify the amendment, but in 1919 it was ratified.
This article explains the campaign for and against Question 3 in Nevada, the top-five initiative. It says the proponents have raised $17,000,000, mostly from out-of-state.
Even though this is a long article, neither it, nor any other newspaper story, explains that if it passed, it would be much more difficult for small qualified parties to remain ballot-qualified. Nevada has two ways for a party to remain qualified. The easier one, by far, is to poll 1% of the statewide vote for any office. Almost any minor party can do that, if it runs for offices for which there is little competition. But the initiative eliminates party nominees (except for president), so that method would be defunct.
The other method is to have registration membership of 1% of the state total. It is uncommon for any minor party to have registration that high, except that parties with “Independent” or “Independence” usually have registration that is at the 2% or even 3% range.
If the measure passes on November 8, 2022, it still won’t be law. In Nevada, constitutional amendments must pass two elections in a row. So it would automatically appear on the ballot again in November 2024.
On October 21, the Nevada Supreme Court issued an order in ACLU of Nevada v County of Nye, 85507. The court will allow Nye County to count its general election ballots by hand instead of with vote-counting machines. But the Court forbad the county from counting the votes as they come in, during the early voting period. State law forbids releasing the returns before election day. Without the Court order, the county’s original plan would have live-streamed the county process starting this week, so that the early returns would be known before election day. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
If the county were using vote-counting equipment, the votes could be counted early, because counting them early with a machine would not be releasing the results early.
On October 3, a Connecticut state trial court declined to remove the Independent Party’s nominees from the November 8 ballot. The party had not filed its bylaws with the Secretary of States for years. The Republican nominee for Treasurer sued the Secretary of State to remove the party, but the judge felt he had filed the case too late. See this story.
