Daily Archive
Stories Posted on October 2, 2008
Favoring a Simple Way to Get to Another Term
Category: Term Limits · State: New York · Source: New York Times
So Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has decided he wants a third term. Now what? The simplest and most direct route — and the strategy that Bloomberg advisers say he is most likely to pursue — is to have the City Council revise the term limits law, at least temporarily. The law was adopted in a 1993 voter referendum that amended the City Charter. To amend the law without going through a special election, Council members will need to introduce a bill, perhaps at one of their next two meetings, scheduled for Oct. 7 and 23. The bill would most likely be assigned to the government operations committee, whose chairman, Councilman Simcha Felder, Democrat of Brooklyn, is a close ally of Mayor Bloomberg’s. Under the law, the committee must hold at least one hearing on the bill, giving the public a chance to weigh in. Then the bill would go for a full vote of the Council. It requires a simple majority, 26 of the 51 members.
Sheriff Big Hair's recall election set for Nov. 4
Category: Recall · State: Montana · Source: Missoulian
A special election on whether to recall embattled Big Horn County Sheriff Lawrence "Pete" Big Hair will be held on the same day as the Nov. 4 general election. County Clerk and Recorder Cyndy Maxwell said Tuesday that voters would get a separate paper ballot to decide whether to recall Big Hair. The ballots will be hand-counted separately from the general election ballot, she said. Organizers of a recall petition drive gathered enough signatures by last Friday to hold the election. They turned in 1,157 signatures from Big Horn County voters - two more than was needed. Big Hair declined to comment about the election at a town hall meeting in Fort Smith on Tuesday, saying he would have to talk to his attorney.
Judge orders state to scrap ballot wording month before vote
Category: Constitutional Convention · State: Illinois · Source: Medill Reports
In an unprecedented move just 34 days before the election, a Cook County judge on Wednesday ordered the language of a statewide referendum on the constitutional convention modified, calling aspects of the current proposal misleading and false. Circuit Judge Nathaniel R. Howse said he was not persuaded that the language in the call for a constitutional convention was accurate and ordered the state to draft notices informing voters of the change to the original ballot question by Friday. “What I’m trying to do is do the right thing by the people of Illinois,” Howse said during a hearing that featured testimony in lawsuits filed against Secretary of State Jesse White and the Illinois State Board of Elections on the referendum’s wording.