On Sunday March 15, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has announced all county elections will be postponed until after May 1.

Additionally, this announcement comes will a list of measures to help combat the spread of COVID-19.

These guidelines include the closing of all schools within the state for the remainder of March.

Due to concerns over COVID-19, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has postponed the March 24 presidential primary election to May 19.

The rescheduling moves the presidential primary to the same day as the state’s general primary.

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan plans to collect signatures in a citywide petition to move Akron’s primary elections from September to May.

City Council previously proposed putting the issue on the November ballot, but the legislation stalled. Local primary elections in Ohio are held in May unless a charter provides otherwise.

Summit County is one of only three Ohio counties holding municipal primary elections in September. Moving the Akron primary to May would save the city money while increasing voter turnout.

Five other Summit County cities are also considering the election date change.

Elected officials across Summit County are introducing legislation to their respective municipalities to move the 2019 primary election from September to May to coincide with the statewide primary.

Once the measure is passed through the local legislative branches, it will be placed on the November ballot this fall for voters to decide.

If passed, the change in primary date will save taxpayer money and increase voter turnout.

As the primaries wind down and the conventions draw closer, there is more and more discussion of the Republican convention being contested. But what is a contested convention? How does the Republican Party handle such an event? And what does it mean for the eventual nominee?

The Pew Research Center describes a contested convention occurring “when no candidate has amassed the majority of delegate votes needed to win his or her party’s nomination in advance of the convention. A candidate still might gather the delegates needed by the time balloting begins, in which case the nomination is settled on the first ballot. But should the first ballot not produce a nominee, most delegates become free to vote for whomever they wish, leading potentially to multiple ballots.”

Since the adoption of the modern primary system in the early 1970s, most presidential conventions have not been contested as one candidate usually won enough delegates to enter the convention as the presumptive nominee. But this year there is a possibility no Republican candidate will have the majority of delegates when the convention begins.

Under the rules of the Republican National Convention, “each candidate for nomination for President … shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight or more states” (including territories) before he or she is able to be on the convention’s first ballot. The balloting process ends when one candidate receives the majority of delegate votes. This year there are 2,472 delegates, so to secure the Republican nomination a candidate will need 1,237—one more vote than 50 percent. Simply having a plurality of delegates is not enough to become the Republican nominee.

Entering the convention, each candidate who ran in the primaries will have a dedicated number of delegates from each state based on his or her performance in that state. Candidates who fail to have the support of enough states or who dropped out will not be able to be on the first ballot.

For the first ballot, the majority of delegates are bound to a specific candidate based on the performance of the candidate in the delegate’s state due to convention rules and, in some cases, state law. Some states assign delegates based on percentage of votes won in the primary, while others are “winner take all.” About 5 percent of the delegates come to the convention free to vote for who they want. These delegates, which include state party leaders and delegates from states or territories electing to not hold a primary, are able to vote their preference on the first ballot. Delegates who were bound to candidates who do not appear on the first ballot may also become unbound for the first ballot.

If no candidate receives a majority vote on the first ballot, the second and subsequent ballots are open to all who wish to put forth their names. Delegates are progressively unbound until all of them are free to vote their personal preference. The balloting will continue until a nominee is chosen. But the more ballots that occur, the less likely the nominee will win in November.

A Pew Research Center study looking at presidential elections since the Civil War found that only seven candidates coming out of contested conventions with multiple ballots were elected president. However, four of those seven candidates had opponents who had also been elected through a contested convention requiring multiple ballots. The last time this occurred was in 1920 when Warren Harding, who required 10 ballots to secure the nomination, beat James Cox, who required 44 ballots to secure his nomination.

The last president to be elected after a contested convention and face a candidate from an uncontested convention was Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Adlai Stevenson was the last candidate to require multiple ballots to win the party nomination.

Sources:

Call of the 2016 Republican National Convention, Republican National Committee, 11/30/15

Contested presidential conventions, and why parties try to avoid them, Drew DeSilver, Pew Research Center, 2/4/16

The Democratic Convention of 1924, Digital History (archived page)

An Extremely Detailed Guide to What the Heck Might Happen at a GOP Contested Convention, Josh Voorhees, Slate Magazine, 3/10/16

On September 24, the North Carolina Legislature passed a bill changing next year’s presidential and state primary election dates. House Bill 373, submitted to Gov. Pat McCrory today, moves the primary dates up from May 3 to March 15, 2016. The legislation also makes other changes to election law, including adjusting the filing dates for campaign finance reporting, allowing, if required, a second primary date to be held on May 24, 2016 for the presidential primary and May 3 for the state primary, and permitting the leader of each political party caucus of the House of Representatives and the Senate to establish a separate affiliated party committee to support the election of candidates of that leader’s political party.

Photo of the North Carolina Legislature by Yassie on Wikimedia Commons.

Changes to current election procedures are being considered following an extremely close Senate race. State Sen. Chris McDaniel narrowly lost to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in a June 24 runoff election. A legal battle is still underway after McDaniel claimed thousands of illegal crossover votes were cast for Cochran.

A 51 member panel of academics and community leaders, assembled by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, will consider if changes to the way voters register for primaries are needed and whether early voting and online registration should be allowed. Currently, voters do not register with a party prior to a primary election and state law states that a voter should only vote in a primary if they intend to support a candidate later.

The panel will make its recommendations to the state legislature for consideration during next year’s session.

On October 2, Arizona Attorney General Thomas C. Horne joined with Secretary of State Ken Bennett by concluding the law under newly enacted House Bill 2593 requires separate candidate committees for the primary and general elections and contribution limits still apply to committee-to-committee transfers. The attorney general amended an opinion in which it had previously stated, “The best practice might be to set up two separate candidate committees (for the primary and general elections), but the statutes do not necessarily require it.”

The secretary of state has advised that transfers between committees for election in the same year are subject to the contribution limit of $2000.

The dates for the Texas general primary and the runoff elections have been changed.

Judge Orlando Garcia of the United States District Court for The Western District of Texas issued an order altering the dates of the elections. The order was agreed to by all parties in the action.

The 2012 general primary date has been changed from March 6 to April 3. The 2012 general primary runoff election will be held on June 5, instead of the previously scheduled date of May 22.

Governor John Kasich signed HB 369 on Thursday, December 15, 2011. The bill consolidated Ohio’s June 12, 2012 primary for the President and U.S. House of Representatives into the state’s March 6, 2012 primary.

The bill also established new boundaries for the state’s 16 congressional districts to settle a dispute over the previous boundaries established earlier this year.

The Ohio House and Senate have passed HB 369, a measure to consolidate the state’s two 2012 primaries into a single primary date, scheduled for March 6, 2012.

The state originally scheduled two primaries, a March 6, 2012 primary for county partisan offices, the state legislature, and the available U.S. Senate seat, and a June 12, 2012 primary for the President and U.S. House of Representatives, in order to give state lawmakers more time to settle differences concerning Ohio’s map for legislative redistricting.

The bill now moves to the desk of Governor John Kasich for his signature.

Governor John Kasich signed House Bill 318 into law the evening of Friday, October 21, 2011. House Bill 318 creates two separate primary elections in the state during 2012. The first primary election, for county partisan offices, the state legislature, and the available U.S. Senate seat, will be held on March 6, 2012, while the second primary date, for the President and U.S. House of Representatives, will be June 12, 2012.

The bill is intended to give state lawmakers more time to settle differences concerning Ohio’s recently passed map for legislative redistricting, as a Democrat-backed coalition seeks to place the redistricting measure before Ohio’s voters for a possible repeal in 2012 if a compromise cannot be reached.