The ballot access reforms had zero chance of passage.

It seems that same-sex marriage and medical marijuana will not be passed in this session, but we are no worse off than we were before.

I heard a lecture from Mark Strama, the Austin state representative in Texas, two days ago where he was upset about the de facto filibuster that certain Democrats pursued because it delayed some of his bills too. So, I think Mr. Winger is right in the regard that gridlock can delay good legislation(not that I necessarily thought Strama’s legislation was all good).

While I am mentioning Strama, he also discussed gerrymandering and agreed with a question I posed that the Republican and Democratic Parties unfairly cemented their power over minor parties through Texas’ restrictive ballot access law. He also mentioned he doesn’t think there is much support in the Texas legislature for ballot access reform, although I was surprised to learn he had sponsored ballot access reform. He also mentioned he disliked what Nader “did” to the Democrats in 2000 but thought he did have a right to do it.

Good point, but I think on balance there are more bad bills than good.

More people are likely to see it if you email it to us.
Also, a comment doesn’t hurt as well – a couple of our writers have not signed up for IPR emails, and some are signed up but don’t read it often, etc.

I do not understand your question. Would you be able to expand on it?

Someone forwarded the Ground Report commentary to our list-serve, so I reposted it.

While we were on the topic, I felt I would be remiss to not add a few words about what the legislature was up to. On my blog – since I cover NY politics – I sometimes post several updates a day. It is a pretty big story.

It really just depends on what we have the energy and time to write up (at least for me that’s how it is and I imagine that’s how it is for the other contributors). I don’t think we ever write up all of the stories we get even just from the email every day.

There were lots of good election law bills pending in the New York state legislature this year, that will die. They probably would have died anyway even without the gridlock, but some of them might have passed. For example, a bill to require a vote of the people before a city council repeals term limits (that the voters had passed already, earlier) did pass the Assembly this year. There was also a bill to reduce the number of signatures for petitioning candidates in special elections, which would have helped the New York Libertarian Party get on the ballot earlier this year in the special 20th US House race.