The Hankster: TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS 6/2/10

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

OPEN PRIMARIES

Primaries in three states may yield additional clues to national electorate's mood (Yahoo News) Both Alabama and New Mexico are holding open primaries to replace two incumbent governors who can't run again because of term limits.

PROP 14

Washington State’s Third Party Leaders Issue Anti-Proposition 14 Statement (Posted by j.kohn, Free and Equal blog)
Poizner opposes open-primary bid - Proposition 14 would put candidates on same ballot (BY JOHN MARELIUS, UNION-TRIBUNE)
Election manipulation initiatives should be defeated (Thinking it Through, by RICHARD REEB, Desert Dispatch)
$65 million raised to pass, defeat Primary propositions (Wendy Poon, News 10 ABC)
Will Open Primaries Work? (Robert Gammon, East Bay Express)
California Propositions (By Kevin Drum, Mother Jones) For all its flaws, the current system strikes me as fairer and more transparent than Prop 14's pseudo-runoff system.
Lt. governor visits Humboldt County (Matt Drange/The Times-Standard)
CLENDENIN: Proposition 14 would be bad for democracy, voters (By Joan Clendenin, Modesto Bee)
Yes, Prop. 14 will change the way politics is done – for the worse (Orange County Register/Orange Punch-Freedomblogging)

CALIFORNIA

COLORADO

Legislator has stake in La Plata County lawsuit (By Charles Ashby, Grand Junction Sentinel) In that case, La Plata County Commissioner Joelle Riddle is asking the court to rule that the law keeping her name off the ballot violates her First Amendment rights to free association and her 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.

NYC CHARTER REVISION

Partisans Rise for Elections Battle (By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL, Wall Street Journal) "If you accept the fact that in most New York City races the winner of the Democratic primary wins the general election, then we're talking 1.4 million voters who can't participate in that critical first round of voting," Mr. Kresky said. "So, it's really a fundamental issue of democracy—a political system that excludes that many voters is not a good thing."

LAST WORD

The Hankster