Subject: Re: [EL] more news V
From: Rob Richie
Date: 11/2/2010, 9:50 PM
To: Election Law

Notable results to flag, Rick.

Here in Maryland, listserv member Jamie Raskin was reelected to a four-year term in the Maryland State Senate with 98.9% of the vote. A constitutional and election law professor at AU's Washington College of Law and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jamie has been a prolific legislator (he was the freshman to make the Maryland Gazette of Politics and Business' "ten most effective senators") and a particularly strong leader on electoral reform issues. He introduced the first National Popular Vote bill to be signed into law in the country, a successful felon reenfranchisement bill, and legislation lowering the voter pre-registration age to 16.

And oh yeah, he's my state senator, a former FairVote board member and a friend of mine.

Speaking of FairVote connections, former staffers Chris Pearson (Vermont) and Diane Russell (Maine) won their state legislative races. Diane's from Maine's biggest city of Portland, which also adopted instant runoff voting for elections for mayor, but rejected 52% to 48% noncitizen voting in local races. In Vermont, voters handily approved a constitutional amendment allowing 17-year-olds to vote in primaries connected to general elections in which they'll be eligible to vote as 18-year-olds.

On the instant runoff voting front, North Carolina's first general election with IRV seems to have been successful -- at least in voters casting valid votes and the tallying of first choice. It was for a vacancy election to fill a seat on the statewide Court of Appeals, with a whopping 13 candidates filing. The leader in first choices has 20%, with the next-place candidate at 15%. I was pleased to see that more voters cast valid ballots in this race than in several other contested races to the Court of Appeals that were higher up on the ballot and had the usual vote-for-one design. In addition, three county-level Superior Court seats had vacancy elections filled by IRV -- one of these will go to an instant runoff, as the leader in first choices has only 36%. There's more background on these races at www.NCVotes123.com

Finally, Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro in California are all using IRV (there called "ranked choice voting") for the first time, each with some hotly contested races - including an open seat race for mayor in Oakland where IRV is playing a key role. San Francisco is also holding IRV elections for its 7th straight November.

We're tweeting info relating to such results at www.twitter.com/fairvote

- Rob RIchie, FairVote



On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Rick Hasen <Rick.Hasen@lls.edu> wrote:

"Partial numbers: Supreme Court justices lacking votes so far to stay on bench "

The latest from Iowa.

Posted by Rick Hasen at 09:13 PM

Questions for Tomorrow

How did Independents and third party candidates do, did their presence affect any D-R races, and what of "none of the above" in Nevada? What we know now is that independent Chafee won the R.I. gubernatorial race, Tancredo lost in Colorado, None of the above is polling under two percent in the Reid-Angle race, but it is doing much better than the "Tea Party" candidate in that race (who some allege was put there by Democrats to take votes away from Angle.)

Posted by Rick Hasen at 09:07 PM

Prop. 20 Ahead, Prop. 27 Losing Badly, in Early CA Returns

See here. In Nevada, the measure to move to merit selection is way behind.

Posted by Rick Hasen at 08:55 PM

Want to Know Who Will Win in Nevada?

Read this.

Posted by Rick Hasen at 08:32 PM 
-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org

_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law




--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"

Rob Richie
Executive Director

FairVote  
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.fairvote.org rr@fairvote.org
(301) 270-4616

Please support FairVote through action and donations -- see http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider  a gift to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's  CFC number is 10132.) Thank you!