independentsforkerry.org

Independents will be key to upcoming California elections (Jason Olson LETTER Sac Bee) In 2012 — for the first time in living memory — independent voters will play a major role in all of California’s elections.

Re “Democrats go at GOP, each other” (Capitol & California, Feb. 13): In 2012 — for the first time in living memory — independent voters will play a major role in all of California’s elections.

Thanks to open primaries and redistricting reform passed by voters in previous elections, all candidates now must run against each other in an open field, where all voters can participate. To get elected, candidates now need to win the support of independent voters. Independent voters have no intention of giving that support away for free.

Independents are deeply concerned about a political dialogue dominated by what’s best for the parties rather than what’s best for the American people. Independents want critical reforms to our political process to shift that balance of power away from the parties and towards the voters. Candidates looking to win their elections should take note of the independent movement for nonpartisan reform.

– Jason Olson, San Francisco

The Hankster

Press release:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — On Tuesday, January 3, representatives of the Libertarian Party and the Green Party will join the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT*) — a national coalition of major Muslim organizations — and other civil liberties group leaders at a news conference in Iowa to express their opposition to the unconstitutional nature of the National Defense Authorization Act’s detention provisions.

This news conference is intended to convey a broad-based public response to President Obama’s signing into law of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that authorizes the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without charge or trial.

Independent Political Report

The European Greens published the following press release on Tuesday, December 6:
According to the OSCE international observers, several violations of basic rights accompanied the elections in Russia, in particular irregularities in the election process.
“We are seriously concerned by what was observed by the OSCE international observers”, said Monica Frassoni, European Green party [...]
Green Party Watch

Here are some initial results from some of Tuesday’s elections involving Green Party candidates:
St. Paul, MN: Greens posted strong results in all 3 city council races they contested, in the city’s first election using instant runoff voting. In Ward 1, Johnny Howard came in 2nd with 26%. In Ward 2, in a race with 5 [...]
Green Party Watch

In 2009, Green candidates won 35% of municipal elections that they entered. Given this figure, it’s not hard to see that with more Greens running in more local elections around the country, the Green Party could become America’s third major party in the course of a few election cycles. Here’s a shout-out to cities where [...]
Green Party Watch

Leading GOP officials have endorsed a scheme to run fake Democrats in Dem recall primaries in order to delay the recall elections against Republicans, in a last-ditch effort to hold the state senate. These elections were secured by the long … Continue reading →
republican-elephant.com

Late in the regular 2011 82nd Texas legislative session, the Senate passed SB 100. The bill, originally submitted by Texas State Senator Van de Putte, brings Texas in compliance with the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The MOVE Act, passed by Congress in 2009, requires that vote by mail ballots for federal elections and local elections held in conjunction with federal elections must be available to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before each election day and run-off election day.

Election dates specified in the Texas election code did not allow 45 days between the dates candidates were qualified to be listed on primary election ballots and the uniform primary election dates. SB 100 adjusts legally prescribed primary election dates such that Texas comes into compliance with the MOVE Act.

SB 100 retains the first Tuesday in March in even-numbered years as the uniform primary election date, but shifts the primary candidate filing deadline date back from the first January business day of even-numbered primary years to mid-December. SB 100 also shifts the primary run-off election day date out from the second Tuesday in April to the fourth Tuesday in May. Other dates, such as the date each political party’s County Executive Committee must meet to specify the order in which candidates will appear on party’s primary ballot, are also adjusted by SB 100.

The particular challenge with SB 100 is that the new fourth Tuesday in May primary run-off uniform election date conflicts with the second Saturday in May uniform election date that many Texas cities and school boards long ago adopted for their local elections. County election officials will be unable to lease voting equipment and trained election workers to cities and school districts for the second Saturday in May election date in even-numbered years because of the proximity to the new primary runoff election date.

Van Taylor (Texas House District 66, Plano) submitted HB 111 to resolve this conflict by eliminating the second Saturday in May uniform election date in even-numbered years from the Texas election code. The practical effect of eliminating the second Saturday in May uniform date would have been to move most city and school board elections to the November uniform election date. HB111 ultimately failed and SB 100 preserves the second Saturday in May uniform election date for both odd and even numbered years. But, SB 100 also provides that county election administrators are no longer required to enter into contracts with cities and school districts to furnish election services.

Cities and school boards across Texas, including most cities and school boards in Collin Co., that currently contract with the county election office to conduct their May elections will find it necessary to either move their elections to the November uniform election date, with the appropriate adjustments to their terms of office, or purchase their own voting equipment and train their own election staff to conduct their own elections. The third alternative may be for cities and school boards to hold their May elections only in odd-number years so that they can contract election services from the county election office; this too would likely require some considerable revisions to city and school board terms of office.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News

Officer elections will be held today as well as some number of seats on the Board.

9:05 AM is the scheduled time for the Chair’s election and then the other officers right behind that  until

11:30 when the non-Officer Board seats come up.

Lunch speaker: Steve Kubby

All action after lunch, fairly anti-climactic.

Official schedule hard to find on the LPCA Website but here it is: http://ca.lp.org/2011-convention/2011-convention-schedule/

Independent Political Report

Every few years, the public, generally as a result of disappointment or opposition to either the incumbent, the political process, the economy, or certain policies, decides to do the equivalent of a political purge, or “vote the bums out.” Unfortunately, in most cases, all this has done is replace one set of dysfunctional office holders [...]
Best News & Politics

Posted by Darcy Richardson at Uncovered Politics:

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 4 — According to the Associated Press, 90 million Americans — only 42% of registered voters — pulled the lever for a congressional candidate on Tuesday. That’s just a hair under 29% of the US population of 310.6 million.

“So much for the consent of the governed,” says Thomas L. Knapp of the fledgling X2012 Project. “In a typical district, the next US Representative was chosen by, at most, one out of four or five registered voters and less than one in six of his or her alleged constituents.”

“A majority of those who could have voted refused to. A supermajority either chose not to vote or weren’t allowed to vote,” says the edgy and contemplative media coordinator and senior news analyst for the Center for a Stateless Society. “Yet for the next two years, that politician will claim to ‘represent,’ and to possess legitimate authority to rule, all of them.”

The X2012 Project, which hopes to build grassroots support for a massive boycott of the 2012 general election, aims to put the lie to those claims. Launched as the polls closed on Tuesday evening, X2012 is a “branding campaign” which allows non-voters to dispute the conventional wisdom that their abstention is rooted in apathy or that it constitutes implicit consent to the existing system of government.

By the time 2012 rolls around, the project hopes to have millions of non-voters on the record as non-consenting.

A July Rasmussen poll found that only 23% of Americans believe the US government functions with “the consent of the governed” — the criterion of legitimacy set forth by America’s founders in the Declaration of Independence.

“Thomas Jefferson didn’t say ‘a majority of the governed,’” says Knapp, a longtime third-party activist who ran for vice president on the nascent Boston Tea Party in 2008 while simultaneously garnering 8,628 votes as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for Congress in Missouri’s 2nd congressional district.

”Even a significant minority of dissenters calls the legitimacy of a government into question,” says Knapp. ”Some estimates say that fewer than one third of Americans supported the Revolution at its beginning. We’ve got a better case against John Boehner, Harry Reid and Barack Obama than Tom Paine had against George III.”

Darcy G. Richardson is the author of six books, including five volumes of a planned seven-volume history on independent and third-party politics in the United States.

Independent Political Report