An AP report begins: Democratic Party leaders want to regain control of the primary calendar and reduce the number of superdelegates through a new commission announced Wednesday.

They also want to review the caucus system, which presumed nominee Barack Obama used so successfully this year. The commission would work over the next year and make recommendations by January 2010.

All the issues are potentially troublesome, with few easy solutions.

Officials said the commission would be formed at the party convention in Denver. The convention's rules committee will take up the matter at a meeting Saturday, two days before the convention starts. -- Talking Points Memo | Democrats to review nominating process

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TalkLeft publishes a paper on the need for Democratic caucus reform. It concludes: It's time for the Democratic Party to demand reforms in the caucus process -- ie, more inclusion, fixing the security breaches in the internal proceedings and producing exact, certified vote counts with a clear audit trail --and if the state Parties are not willing to implement the reforms then frankly they should get out of the elections business. Further, the DNC needs to reconsider and adjust the delegate allocation to be more in-sync with total votes cast so that the election results are closer to one person one vote. Then the will of the majority will not be overturned by the votes of a few.

Moreover, repeatedly in cases challenging the caucus system, the courts have ruled in favor of the state Party instead of upholding the voting rights of the people. It's said that in the absence of legislation, judges become the legislators.

So at a broader level, it's time for Congress to see and understand how caucuses -- as a voting system -- damage democracy through mass disenfranchisement and through gross distortion of election results and to pass legislation to remedy the injustice.

Hopefully, this report will be a call to reform that voters themselves will take to heart and act on by calling the Democratic Party and by contacting their legislators to demand reform. -- 2008 Democratic Presidential Preference Election

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The Scotsman reports: Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, yesterday outlined proposals to make the Lords fully or mainly elected, although he admitted this would not happen until after the next general election, due by June 2010.

He wants the number of peers reduced from more than 700 to no more than 450, and would abolish the hereditary peers – those sitting in the Lords by right of family ties. Their number has already been reduced to 92 by reforms introduced when Tony Blair was prime minister.

Peers would serve single terms of between 12 and 15 years, compared with MPs, who have to be re-elected every five years.

The Tories also back reform, meaning that changes are likely to be put before MPs which ever party forms the next government. But a number of members of the Lords, which voted by a huge majority last year to reject having the second chamber elected, said they would oppose the changes vigorously. Baroness D'Souza, who heads a group of 61 independent or cross-bench peers, said she was concerned that the primacy of the Commons could be undermined if both MPs and peers were elected. -- Peers vow to oppose planned reforms in Lords amid fears for parliament's integrity

Other stories on this are in the Herald and the Times.

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The Tampa Tribune reports: Two registered voters have filed a lawsuit in Pasco County challenging the write-in candidate "loophole" in state election law.

They say the provision unfairly closed the Aug. 26 primary election in a county commission race, effectively disenfranchising 170,000 registered Democrats, Independents and minor party voters in Pasco.

Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1998 to let all voters participate in primaries if all candidates in a race come from the same political party. In 2000, however, the state Division of Elections ruled that the primary is not open if the race includes any write-in candidates, who are considered general election candidates.

State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, has been working to close the loophole, which he said politicians are exploiting. -- Suit Targets Write-In Candidates Loophole

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David Barron writes in the Convictions blog on Slate: Obviously, one solution for the future is to scrap the electoral college altogether, something Senator Nelson of Florida proposed today.

But as it happens, I came across this news while reading Arthur Schlesinger s updated version of The Imperial Presidency. There, he sets forth a plan for avoiding such a problem that seems to have been lost to history or at least, came as news to me and that seems preferable to dispensing with the electoral college altogether.

Schlesinger calls it The National Bonus plan. The idea is to keep the electoral college, but then augment it with additional electors for the winner of the popular vote. His proposal was to award a total of 101 bonus electors to the winner of the popular vote, which strikes me as at least 50 too many. After all, if the bonus is too big, the college gets wiped out for all practical purposes; candidates need not really compete very hard outside their natural bases of support. -- Enough With Superdelegates, What About the Electoral College

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The Hill reports: A renewed campaign to give the representative from Washington, D.C. the right to vote in Congress is gaining ground with lobbyists for civil rights groups, ethics watchdogs and unions gearing up for a new push next year.

Money is being raised, powerful lobbyists are offering their time free of charge and supporters are traveling the country to spread the message that the city that houses the Capitol deserves a vote inside. Advocates for D.C. voting rights sense that education can help them bridge the gap in votes needed.

Washington’s city council plans to vote Tuesday on a $500,000 grant to DC Vote , an advocacy group, while Democrats in Congress are expected to lift lobbying restrictions that will allow the group to engage lawmakers more aggressively.

That could set the stage for a successful vote on D.C. voting rights in 2009. In September 2007, legislation died in the Senate, falling three votes short of the 60 needed to close off debate. -- TheHill.com - Lobbyists gear up for push to get voting rights for D.C.

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As Rob Richie has pointed out, the Libertarians used a live-action version of instant runoff voting choose their presidential and VP candidates. To review the voting, go to the Official Website of the Libertarian National Committee. The lowest polling candidate in each round was eliminated. Also, a candidate was eliminated if he/she had less than 5% of the ballots.

While former Rep. Bab Barr lead on the first two ballots, he and Ruwart were tied in rounds 3 and 4, and Barr was slightly behind on round 5. Barr was able to pull ahead (and win) on round 6 by getting most of Root's votes when he was eliminated. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Root endorsed Barr before the 6th round and Barr returned the favor by endorsing Root for vice-president.

Congratulations to my friend Bill Redpath on being elected as Party Chair. I head Bill's voice on NPR this morning introducing Barr to the convention after the nomination.

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BBC reports: Boris Johnson has won the race to become the next mayor of London - ending Ken Livingstone s eight-year reign at City Hall.

The Conservative candidate won with 1,168,738 first and second preference votes, compared with Mr Livingstone s 1,028,966 on a record turnout of 45%. ...

First preference votes:
Boris Johnson (Tory): 1,043,761
Ken Livingstone (Lab): 893,877
Brian Paddick (Lib Dem): 236,685
Sian Berry (Green): 77,374
Richard Barnbrook (BNP): 69,710
Alan Craig (Christian Choice): 39,249
Gerard Batten (UKIP): 22,422
Lindsey German (Left List): 16,796
Matt O'Connor (Eng Democrats): 10,695
Winston McKenzie (Ind): 5,389 -- BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Johnson wins London mayoral race

Note: Since the bottom eight candidates together had fewer votes than Livingstone, all of their ballots were re-examined and the second preferences counted.

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Update: Steve Rankin has sent me a link to the complaint.

Free Citizen blog reports: In an open primary, a party's primary ballot is available to any voter who wants it. There are two types of open primaries: Mississippi is one of the 13 states with "open primary, public record," meaning that each primary voter's choice of party is publicly recorded. Idaho, in contrast, is one of the eight states with "open primary, private choice": each primary voter picks a party in secret, and no record is made of this choice. ...

The recently-ended session of the heavily-Republican Idaho legislature failed to pass legislation modifying the primary election law. The Senate did pass a bill, 20-15, to switch to "open primary, public record," but the House refused to consider it. The Republican governor opposes changing the primary setup, as the state GOP chairman also steadfastly has. The chairman is up for re-election at the state convention in June, and he may have a contest from former state Sen. Rod Beck, who has spearheaded the efforts to change the primary election law.

Late Friday, the Republican Party filed a new federal lawsuit against the state-mandated open primary. The Idaho GOP will be able to cite U. S. District Judge Allen Pepper's 2007 ruling that Mississippi's open primary law is unconstitutional. If the 5th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agrees with Pepper, the Idaho Republicans will also be able to cite that decision. Mississippi Democratic Party v. Barbour. -- Free Citizen: Idaho Republicans Again Challenge Open Primary Law

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The Washington Post reports: If this were Britain, Russia or India, Rudy Giuliani '08 caps would not be on the clearance racks. In those countries, where bigwigs and insiders get to nominate party leaders, the former Republican front-runner and establishment favorite would have long ago been anointed the winner.

Giuliani's inglorious fall, and the ascendance of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), send an important message to the world about the importance of intra-party democracy: Interesting things happen when you allow rank-and-file voters to choose their leaders. Primaries don't just eliminate over-hyped Giulianis; they also discover underrated Obamas and never-say-die McCains.

"Barack Obama is Exhibit A about the value of holding primaries," said James Adams, a political scientist at the University of California at Davis, who studies how political parties around the world choose leaders. "A lot of Democratic Party elites did not know what a good campaigner he was or would prove to be. Candidates like Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani may be Exhibit B about the value of holding primaries, in that they proved less appealing than their press clippings would have suggested."

If the eyes of the world are glued on the U.S. presidential primaries, the most important lesson others take away might have to do with the importance of having such races in the first place. New research by Adams and others shows that primaries are the most efficient way to discover political phenoms such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton -- politicians who might never have been chosen if it had been left up to party insiders. -- Shankar Vedantam - Lost in the Smoke-Filled Room: Unexpected Talent - washingtonpost.com

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Introduction to The Irony of Judicial Elections by David E. Pozen in Columbia Law Review: Judicial elections in the United States have undergone a dramatic transformation. For more than a century, these state and local elections were relatively dignified, low-key affairs. Campaigning was minimal; incumbents almost always won; few people voted or cared. Over the past quarter century and especially the past decade, however, a rise in campaign spending, interest group involvement, and political speech has disturbed the traditional paradigm. In the “new era,” as commentators have dubbed it, judicial races routinely feature intense competition, broad public participation, and high salience. This Article takes the new era as an opportunity to advance our understanding of elective versus nonelective judiciaries. In revisiting this classic debate, the Article aims to make three main contributions. First, it offers an analytic taxonomy of the arguments for and against electing judges that seeks to distinguish the central normative concerns from the more contingent, empirical ones. Second, applying this taxonomy, the Article shows how both the costs and the benefits of elective judiciaries have been enhanced by recent developments, leaving the two sides of the debate further apart than ever. Finally, the Article explores several deep ironies that emerge from this cleavage. Underlying these ironies is a common insight: As judicial elections achieve greater legitimacy as elections, they will increasingly undermine the judiciary’s distinctive role and our broader democratic processes. There is an underappreciated tradeoff between the health of judicial elections and the health of the judiciary, the Article posits, that can help recast the controversy over the new era. -- Columbia Law Review

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PolitickerME.com reports: The state Senate passed a bill Wednesday allowing Maine to participate in the National Popular Vote interstate compact. The bill will next go before the House for consideration.

The Senate was deadlocked over the bill, voting 17 to 17 in early March. Proponents of the bill vowed to lobby heavily until the tie could be broken.

It was a partisan divide, Democrats for and Republicans against, with the exception of Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, who had voted against it.

The bill was able to pass today when Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, jumped ship and voted with the Democrats, for an 18 to 17 final tally. -- Senate approves National Popular Vote initiative | Politicker ME

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The Scotsman reports: SCOTLAND could become independent with less than 50 per cent of people backing that as their first choice for the country, under plans unveiled by Alex Salmond yesterday.

The First Minister delivered a bombshell announcement that the referendum on independence would probably not be a straight yes-no vote.

Instead, people would be asked to rank a series of options in order of preference – independence, the status quo or more powers for the parliament. This could mean independence being gained, even if only a minority rank it as first choice.

Critics immediately raised concerns because, on such a momentous issue, voters' second choices would become as important as the first, after the option with least votes was knocked out. In an extreme set of circumstances, independence could be achieved with only 26 per cent making it their top preference, if all the second-choice votes plumped for a break from the Union. ...

Under this system, the first choice votes would be added up and the option with the least support eliminated. The second-choice votes from this third option would then be re-allocated and the option achieving the most overall votes would win. -- Minority vote could take Scotland out of the Union - The Scotsman

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The Michigan Law Review’s companion journal First Impressions today published an online symposium on Recent Proposals for Electoral College Reform.

Several proposals for changing the manner in which electoral votes are assigned have been increasingly debated since the 2008 presidential campaign began. Among these are recent suggestions that states assign their electoral votes based on the popular vote results in individual congressional districts or assign their electoral votes statewide based on the national popular vote. The symposium contributors explore the viability and advisability in today’s political climate of these and other Electoral College reform proposals.

Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law Professor Daniel P. Tokaji argues that the thirty-five day period in which states can take advantage of the “safe harbor” provision under federal law offers insufficient time for the resolution of post-election disputes over electors. Professor Tokaji proposes a new timetable that would allow states more time to complete recount and contest proceedings in the event of close, contested elections—a change he feels is justified on both fairness and federalism grounds.

Sacramento-based election law attorney and former legal counsel for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Republican Party Thomas W. Hiltachk explains and defends his proposed statewide initiative that would change California’s winner-take-all system of awarding its fifty-five electoral votes to a system that arguably would make California more relevant to the election process. If the California initiative took effect, the state would award the presidential candidate winning the popular vote in each of the state’s congressional districts one electoral vote while awarding the winner of the state’s overall popular vote two electoral votes.

Washington, D.C.-based election law attorney and former Democratic campaign manager Sam Hirsch critiques Hiltachk’s proposed initiative, arguing that the congressional-district system increases the chances of the presidency being awarded to the second-place finisher in popular votes, is significantly biased to favor one political party, and is founded on the erroneous assumption that congressional-district lines are politically “neutral” and thus well suited to functions other than electing members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

University of Chicago Dean of Social Sciences John Mark Hansen examines the effects of the Electoral College system and the proposed reforms to it on the prospect of equal voice in elections, concluding that if every vote is to count equally, the only solution is to elect the president by direct popular vote.

University of California’s Hastings College of the Law Professor Ethan J. Leib and Hastings College of the Law J.D. Candidate Eli J. Mark critique three state-based reform systems—reforms granting electoral votes based on winning congressional districts, reforms granting electoral votes in proportion to the state’s popular vote, and reforms granting all of a state’s electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner—and note the effects of partisan principles on defenses and critiques of them.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visiting Scholar Alexander S. Belenky discusses instituting direct popular election of the president as well as the National Popular Vote interstate compact but also evaluates a third option that makes the nationwide popular vote a decisive factor in electing a president but retains the Electoral College as a safeguard against failure to elect a president.

University of Michigan J.D. candidate Daniel Rathbun contends both legal and sociological theory can explain the National Popular Vote compact’s failure to take hold. Legally, Rathbun argues, the NPV overlooks significant constitutional and practical-institutional obstacles. Sociologically, he contends, the NPV is structurally incapable of dis-embedding the federalist theory underlying the Electoral College.

To download a PDF of the entire symposium, feel free to click here.

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The Register-Herald reports: An attempt to lead West Virginia into a new era of voting for president by tying the hands of electors to the popular vote got nowhere Tuesday with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

For nearly 45 minutes, senators shuddered at the thought of a few electoral-heavy states making the decision on the occupant in the White House.

More than one panelist recalled the thinking of the Founding Fathers before resoundingly killing SB52. -- The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia - Panel nixes popular vote measure

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Election Data Services reports: New Census Bureau population estimates released today continue the changes in congressional representation first documented with last year’s population release. However, trends contained in the new data point towards new twists in population growth over the next three years and lead to a variety of potential scenarios by the time apportionment happens in 2010.

[The link on their website is the sentence that begins "Read the full press release ..."]

The good news for Alabama from EDS's projections is that we won't lose a congressional seat after the 2010 reapportionment.

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TPM Muckracker reports: Who is Paul Singer? He and Rudy Giuliani would prefer you not think too much about it.

Singer, who founded the multibillion dollar hedge fund Elliott Associates, has raised $200,000 for Giuliani. He flies Giuliani around in his jet.

And, as of September, his $175,000 contribution was the sole backing for the Republican scheme to split up California's electoral votes. Instead of all the electoral votes in the country's most populous state going to the state's winner (almost surely the Democrat), the ballot initiative would throw the loser (the Republican) his percentage, potentially swinging the election. ...

Singer tells the Times that made the contribution because he "believes in proportional voting in the Electoral College." As the Times notes, Singer was also a donor to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004. Presumably that was just because he believes in the truth. -- TPMmuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Giuliani's California Schemin' Money Man

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The Asheville Citizen-Times reports: Cary on Tuesday became North Carolina's first test of instant runoff voting, a system the state will try out next month in Hendersonville's City Council election.

Letting voters make backup choices eliminates the need for runoff elections that cost extra money and tend to draw low turnout.

Opponents of the movement, like Raleigh resident Chris Telesca of the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting, say it makes voting and counting the votes more complex.

In Cary, though, voters interviewed at the polls all said they understood how to vote using the system. Most of them said they had come prepared to rank candidates after receiving mailers, viewing the county Elections Board's Web site or hearing about it in the media.

"I thought it was really positive," said Alex Funk, a retired engineer who biked to the Herbert C. Young Community Center to vote. "I mean, why do this all twice?"

Corey Cook, an assistant professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who has studied instant runoff voting, said most voters understand it, but governments must spend money before every election to educate those who don't. -- CITIZEN-TIMES.com: Instant runoff gets test run

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The Boston Globe reports: When he steps into the dim privacy of a voting booth on Nov. 6, Larry Davidson - Dorchester resident, Democrat, math teacher - will circle ovals next to the candidates he has chosen based not only on politics, but on the power of math.

Like all voters in Boston, Davidson will be allowed to choose four at-large candidates for the City Council from nine contenders. And like many other voters, he will contemplate using just one of those votes as a "bullet vote:" a single vote for one candidate, not only advancing that candidacy but denying other hopefuls his remaining votes.

But deciding whether you should cast a single ballot for your first-choice candidate, mathematicians say, you have to make strategic judgments about the race and how others will vote. And that requires a sophisticated view of the election.

"It all depends, truly, on your ability to understand who are the competitors for that last one or two seats," said Arlene Ash, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and a statistician who testified in court about voting irregularities in the 2000 presidential election in Florida. -- Voter's quandary: to bullet on the ballot? - The Boston Globe

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The New York Times reports: Supporters of Rudolph W. Giuliani and of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are embroiled in their first major affray of the political season over a ballot initiative on presidential electoral votes some 2,500 miles from the pancake houses of Skaneateles, N.Y., and the fire stations of Queens. ...

The proposed measure here would ask voters to apportion electoral votes by Congressional district, potentially giving the 2008 Republican nominee 20 of the state’s 55 votes — the rough equivalent of winning Illinois or Pennsylvania — in this otherwise reliably Democratic state. ...

Started by a Republican lawyer in California, the measure has been driven almost entirely by people who are associated with or have given money to Mr. Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

The effort to kill the initiative — executed with a swift fierceness almost unheard of for an initiative in such an early stage — has been led by a bevy of Clinton supporters, including a former Clinton White House official, prominent elected Democratic supporters and one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prolific fund-raisers. -- In Ballot Fight, California Gets a Taste of ’08

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Bob Bauer writes on ACSblog.org: Political parties are having a hard time, and as the Supreme Court meets this week, it will hear their most recent complaint. It is not the complaint most in the news, as each national party grasps for control over its own Presidential nominating schedule. The Court will hear from parties that one state, Washington State, has approved what is called a “modified blanket primary” system, the effect of which is to deprive them of their right to choose their own candidates for partisan political office. Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 460 F.3d. 1108 (2006).

Under the Washington arrangement, approved in 2004 by initiative, all voters of all parties participate in a primary, voting for any candidate they choose. The top vote-getters face each other. But any candidate can express her party preference, at her option, and this preference is reflected on the ballot. Hence the candidate who emerges may be associated with a party, by self-selection, but without the party’s consent, and perhaps over its active opposition. In fact, this system could produce two candidates identifying themselves as, say, Republicans, and they will face each other: but neither may be truly a Republican, and neither may have any support within their own party, or the backing or endorsement of any formal party process such as a convention.

The Republican party, challenging this arrangement, has won both rounds in court, leading to the case now before the Supreme Court. The State of Washington believes that the Republicans have it wrong in imagining that their associational rights are infringed by the blanket primary. -- Guest Blogger: Does Washington State's "modified blanket primary" system violate the right of association?

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The Washington Post reports: The Supreme Court convened its new term yesterday, and the justices immediately immersed themselves in the first of several election-law challenges the court has agreed to decide in the midst of the 2008 elections.

Skeptical justices heard the state of Washington defend its unique voter-approved election system against a challenge that it unconstitutionally prevents political parties from choosing their own nominees.

Washington has a "top two" primary system, in which all candidates on the ballot state a party "preference'' and all voters may choose among them. The top two advance to the general election, even if they prefer the same party. The major political parties have challenged the system, saying it violates their First Amendment association rights.

Washington Attorney General Robert McKenna argued that the state has a right to set its own election rules, and that the party preference listed by the candidates is simply helpful information for voters, not a sign that the party endorses that candidate's views.

But several justices were doubtful. -- State of Washington Defends Its Primaries Before Supreme Court - washingtonpost.com

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The Los Angeles Times reports: Plagued by a lack of money, supporters of a statewide initiative drive to change the way California's 55 electoral votes are apportioned, first revealed here by Top of the Ticket in July, are pulling the plug on that effort.

In an exclusive report to appear on this website late tonight and in Friday's print editions, The Times' Dan Morain reports that the proposal to change the winner-take-all electoral vote allocation to one by congressional district is virtually dead with the resignation of key supporters, internal disputes and a lack of funds.

The reality is hundreds of thousands of signatures must be gathered by the end of November to get the measure on the June 2008 ballot. -- Los Angeles Times: Top of the Ticket: Politics, coast to coast, with the L.A. Times

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The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports: Minneapolis voters have approved a plan for instant-runoff voting, but the state constitution may not allow it, according to a new attorney general's opinion.

The opinion, obtained by the Star Tribune, doesn't explicitly say the Minneapolis system of ranking candidates in order of preference is unconstitutional.

But it concludes that if the closest case to a precedent is followed, instant-runoff voting probably isn't permitted by the state constitution.

The voting method requires voters to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gains a majority, the lowest candidate is dropped and the second-place votes cast by supporters of that candidate are added to the remaining candidates. The process continues until one candidate gains a majority. -- Minneapolis' instant-runoff voting plan may be unconstitutional

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The Washington Post reports: Republican lawmakers yesterday blocked the Senate from taking up the D.C. vote bill, a potentially fatal setback for the District's most promising effort in years to get a full member of Congress.

The vote was on a motion to simply consider the bill. Fifty-seven senators voted in favor, three short of the 60 needed to proceed. Without enough support to vault the Senate's procedural hurdles, the bill is expected to stall this year and possibly next year.

The Senate action was a crushing disappointment to many activists in the decades-long campaign for voting representation in Congress. The bill, which passed the House in April, has gone further than any other D.C. vote measure in almost 30 years. ...

The bill was a compromise aimed at appealing to both parties. It would expand the House by two seats: one for the overwhelmingly Democratic District and the other for the next state in line to add a seat. That state currently is Utah, which is heavily Republican. Utah would also gain an electoral vote. -- Senators Block D.C. Vote Bill, Delivering Possibly Fatal Blow - washingtonpost.com

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The Washington Post reports: Facing a critical Senate vote today, supporters and opponents of the D.C. voting rights bill made impassioned speeches and lobbied on Capitol Hill in a last-minute push on the District's efforts to get its first full member of Congress.

The motion coming up on the Senate floor would merely clear the way for lawmakers to consider the bill. But if supporters fail to get the necessary 60 votes, the legislation will probably be doomed for this year, according to senators and staff. ...

The bill, which passed the House in April, is crafted as a political compromise. It would add two seats to the House of Representatives, one for the heavily Democratic District and the other for the next state in line to pick up an extra seat: currently Utah, which leans Republican.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is strongly critical of the bill, as is the White House, which has threatened a veto. McConnell vehemently denied yesterday that resisting the legislation was tantamount to opposing voting rights. -- 11th-Hour Pressure Applied on D.C. Vote - washingtonpost.com

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As I noted 3 weeks ago, the Eleventh Circuit has ruled that the intervenors in Dillard v. Chilton County Commission had no standing to object to the consent decree entered about 20 years ago. (See this post.)

Now the intervenors have moved for rehearing and rehearing en banc. You can read their petition here.

Disclosure: James Blacksher and I represent the Dillard plaintiffs in this case.

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The Birmingham News reports: A federal appeals court on Monday delivered a victory to activists who integrated the Chilton County Commission, ruling on the last of more than 150 lawsuits that reshaped the way Alabamians elect local officials statewide.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned a lower court's decision, and left in place an election system that led to black representation on the commission. The suit was the last of the so-called "Dillard suits," which challenged the at-large voting system that civil rights activists said kept county commissions, city commissions and school boards all over the state almost exclusively white.

James Blacksher, an attorney who represented civil rights activists in the Chilton County suit and many of the Dillard suits, said the suit was the only one remaining unresolved after 20 years of litigation. ...

The Dillard lawsuits are credited by civil rights activists, legal scholars and historians with giving blacks their first real representation in local government in Alabama since the end of slavery. Before the suits were filed, there were only a handful of blacks in local elected office. Today, more than 17 percent of local offices are held by blacks, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. That makes Alabama one of just four states in the nation with a percentage of black elected officials in double figures. -- Chilton integration system upheld- al.com

Disclosure: I am one of the counsel for the black plaintiffs in the Dillard cases.

The opinion can be downloaded from the 11th Circuit website.

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Hendrick Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker: Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes—votes that it wouldn’t get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union. ...

Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that’s just a letterhead—there’s no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm’s managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s personal lawyer for election matters. ...

“Equal Representation” sounds good, too. And the winner-take-all rule, which is in force in all but two states, does seem unfair on the face of it. (The two are Maine and Nebraska, which use congressional-district allocation. But they are so small—only five districts between them—and so homogeneous that neither has ever split its electoral votes.) It would be obviously unjust for a state to give all its legislative seats to the party that gets the most votes statewide. So why should Party A get a hundred per cent of that state’s electoral votes if forty per cent of its voters support Party B? No wonder Democrats and Republicans alike initially react to this proposal in a strongly positive way. To most people, the electoral-college status quo feels intuitively wrong. So does war. But that doesn’t make unilateral disarmament a no-brainer. -- Votescam

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The Scotsman reports (and this is the whole report): SNP candidate John Corall yesterday won the first local council by-election in Scotland under the new single transferable voting system. He swept to victory in Aberdeen's Midstocket and Rosemount contest caused by the death of Tory Councillor John Porter. -- The Scotsman - Politics - SNP takes council seat from Tories

A comment to the story gives more details: A row has broken out following Scotland’s first council by-election since the introduction of a system of electing councillors under a fair votes system known as the Single transferable Vote (STV).

The Midstocket and Rosemount by-election for Aberdeen City Council followed the death of long-serving Conservative John Porter.

At one stage during the count, when there were only four votes separating the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats requested a recount. The request was denied by the Returning Officer.

Liberal Democrats now plan on raising the Returning Officer’s controversial decision with the Electoral Commission.

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The Portland Oregonian reports: Oregon voters would decide next year whether to all but eliminate the "double-majority" requirement in local property tax elections under a measure approved Wednesday by the Senate.

The proposed constitutional amendment would be on the November 2008 ballot. If approved, it would roll back the provision in the Oregon Constitution that requires bond issues and other property tax measures to receive a majority vote and a turnout of at least 50 percent of registered voters.

House Joint Resolution 15 would exempt elections in May and November of any year from the double-majority requirement. That would effectively repeal the requirement because there would be little reason for local officials to schedule a property tax vote at other times of the year. -- 'Double-majority' rule challenged - OregonLive.com

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AP reports: Newly released files from the lynching of two black couples more than 60 years ago contain a disturbing revelation: The FBI investigated suspicions that a three-term governor of Georgia sanctioned the murders to sway rural white voters during a tough election campaign.

The 3,725 pages obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act do not make conclusions about the still-unsolved killings at Moore's Ford Bridge. But they raise the possibility that Eugene Talmadge's politics may have been a factor when a white mob dragged the four from a car, tied them to a tree and opened fire. ...

Talmadge, who died just months after his 1946 election to a fourth term, dominated Georgia politics in the 1930s and 1940s with a mix of racism and pocketbook populism.

He came under FBI scrutiny because of a visit he made to the north Georgia town of Monroe two days before the Democratic gubernatorial primary and a day after a highly charged racial incident there, a fight in which a black sharecropper stabbed and severely wounded a white farmer. The sharecropper was one of the four people who would later be lynched. ...

Votes from small rural counties played a crucial role in Georgia's elections then because primaries were decided by a "county unit system," similar to the electoral college, which minimized the impact of urban centers. -- FBI Investigated Ga. Gov in Old Lynching

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Rob Richie's article on observing the Scottish election begins:
On May 3rd, Scotland held groundbreaking elections for its regional parliament and for local government, using two different proportional voting methods. As a result of these new, fairer methods, the Scottish National Party (SNP) ousted the Labor Party from power in the parliamentary vote and with other opposition parties gained major ground in local elections. At the same time, however, a sharp rise in invalid ballots and delays in the count caused a storm of controversy.

I was part of a 25-member delegation of civic leaders, city councilors and election officials organized by FairVote and the British Electoral Reform Society that observed the elections and attended pre-election and post-election briefings on redistricting and election administration in Britain. We need more such delegations, as there is much we can learn from the experiences of other advanced democracies as they work to reform their election practices. -- IN THE NEWS » Blog Archive » Election Observers Abroad

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The Salt Lake Tribune reports: There's one sure thing in the debate over giving Utah a fourth U.S. House seat and the District of Columbia its first full-voting member: legal scholars completely disagree on the plan's constitutionality.
For some, the bill is patently wrong, "the most premeditated unconstitutional act by Congress in decades," as one professor has repeatedly testified.
For others, it's clear the founding fathers didn't intend for nearly 600,000 residents of the nation's capital to go without representation in Congress.
Wednesday, several scholars testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the measure primarily meant to give the largely Democratic district a voice in Congress but balanced with a seat for Republican-dominated Utah. -- Salt Lake Tribune - Legal scholars disagree on bill's constitutionality

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The Electoral Reform Society has issued its report on the Scottish local authority elections: The introduction of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) for Scottish local government was a change long campaigned for by the Electoral Reform Society along with numerous other civic and political groups. We are, on the whole, delighted with the result.

The repercussions of the elections on 3 May are continuing to emerge. There are some points, though, which are already apparent. The elections to Scotland’s local authorities give us a positive story to tell about Scotland’s voters wielding the power of STV for the first time.

It is important to recognise the significance of these Scottish local elections. This was the first time that STV had been used in a large-scale public election on the UK mainland. It was a new system and, to a certain extent, an experiment. This initial report from the Electoral Reform Society aims to present the first findings from that experiment accessibly yet comprehensively. An STV election – particularly this one, being the first – invites further analysis and comment and we will provide that in a comprehensive report in the summer. This initial report, however, contains the key lessons that can be learned from the results of the 3 May local elections. -- Scottish LG report May 2007.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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BBC News reports:
The Electoral Reform Society has hailed Scotland's council election as a resounding success.

The organisation has suggested that there were "major inadequacies" in the vote for the Scottish Parliament, which saw more than 140,000 rejected ballots.

However, a report from the society will say that the single transferable vote (STV) system used in the council election worked well.

It wants Holyrood to adopt the STV method, a call backed by the Lib Dems.

Research carried out by the BBC has shown that the proportion of spoilt ballot papers was far lower for the council election on 3 May. -- BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Council election hailed a success

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The Charlotte Observer reports: Voting in North Carolina could look very different in the years ahead.

There could be a different deadline for voters to register. There could be an earlier date for the N.C. presidential primary or caucus. There could even be a different way to appoint the Electoral College, which picks the president. ...

Perhaps the most historic change could be in how North Carolina appoints people to the Electoral College -- the 538-member group that, under the U.S. Constitution, decides the presidency. As in most other states, North Carolina's 15 electors vote for the winner of the state's popular vote.

Under a bill sponsored by Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Charlotte Democrat, the electors would vote for the winner of the national vote. He said the bill would draw more attention to North Carolina, which has a low profile in presidential elections, and create a national election for president. ...

In a historic vote, the bill got through the state Senate this week, and it is expected to get a hearing in the House. The vote, though, was along partisan lines, with Republicans arguing the bill would help Democrats. -- Proposals to change election process

Posted by Ed at 8:01 AM