Category: State

Since returning from recess on August 12, the state legislature’s lower house has passed two constitutional amendments designed to reduce the voting age. ACA 4 would allow 17-year-olds who will be 18 at the time of the next general election to vote in that year’s primaries and special elections. As of August 2019, 16 states…

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) defeated former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. (R) to win the Republican nomination for governor of Mississippi in Tuesday’s runoff election. As of 9 p.m. Central time on August 27, Reeves had received 55.5% of the vote to Waller’s 44.5% with 66% of precincts reporting.   The…

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) appointed Jane Bland to Place 6 on the Texas Supreme Court, filling the vacancy left by Justice Jeff Brown. Brown was confirmed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in late July. Bland previously served on the Texas First District Court of Appeals from 2003 to…

Candidates had until August 22 to file to run for four vacant seats in the Missouri House of Representatives. The special elections are scheduled for November 5. The following candidates filed to run:   District 22: The seat became vacant after Rep. Brandon Ellington (D) was elected to be an at-large District 3 member of…

The Republican nomination for governor of Mississippi will be decided by a primary runoff between Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. Tuesday. Reeves and Waller were the top two finishers in the August 6 primary but neither won the majority of the vote necessary to win outright.…

On August 27, a special primary runoff is being held in District 74 of the Alabama House of Representatives. Republicans Charlotte Meadows and Michael Fritz are competing in the primary runoff after advancing from the June 11 primary with 46.7% and 19.1% of the vote, respectively. Rayford Mack ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. The…

Colorado voters approved Amendment 71 (sometimes referred to as the Raise the Bar initiative) in 2016. Amendment 71 required initiative petitioners to spread out signature gathering efforts across all of the state’s 35 senate districts, making it more difficult to collect enough signatures to qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot.   Amendment 71 also…

On August 22, 2019, the Michigan Republican Party filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Western Michigan seeking to block Proposal 2, which transferred the power to draw the state’s congressional and legislative districts from the state legislature to a 13-member independent redistricting commission. Voters approved Proposal 2, with 61 percent voting in…

Last night, President Donald Trump (R) headlined a fundraiser in Louisville for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s (R) re-election campaign. He also spoke at the American Veterans convention earlier in the day, where he told an audience, “We’ll get [Bevin and Sen. Mitch McConnell] both back in.”   Bevin, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear (D), and…

In California, Schools & Communities First announced that it would file a new version of an initiative to require commercial and industrial properties, except those zoned as commercial agriculture, to be taxed based on their market value. Currently, Proposition 13 (1978) requires the taxable value of residential, commercial, and industrial properties to be based on…