The Tap: Thursday, October 6, 2016

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The Tap covered election news, public policy, and other noteworthy events from February 2016 to February 2022.

Review of the day

The excerpts below were compiled from issue #37 of The Tap, which was published on October 8, 2016. READ THE FULL VERSION HERE.

Federal

• Thirty former Republican lawmakers released a signed letter to their fellow Republicans denouncing Donald Trump. The letter stated, “Our party's nominee this year is a man who makes a mockery of the principles and values we have cherished and which we sought to represent in Congress. Given the enormous power of the office, every candidate for president must be judged rigorously in assessing whether he or she has the competence, intelligence, knowledge, understanding, empathy, judgment, and temperament necessary to keep America on a safe and steady course. Donald Trump fails on each of those measures, and he has proven himself manifestly unqualified to be president. … It is in that spirit that, as Donald Trump’s unfitness for public office has become ever more apparent, we urge our fellow Republicans not to vote for this man whose disgraceful candidacy is indefensible. This is no longer about our party; it’s now about America. We may differ on how we will cast our ballots in November but none of us will vote for Donald Trump.” Among the signatories were four former Representatives from key 2016 swing states: Bill Clinger of Pennsylvania, Jim Leach of Iowa, Tom Petri of Wisconsin, and G. William Whitehurst of Virginia. All four spent more than a decade in Congress.
  • See also: Republican and their declared positions on Donald Trump

• GOP strategist and media consultant Mindy Finn will be independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin’s running mate, BuzzFeed reports. Finn worked on Mitt Romney’s 2008 campaign and George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign. In 2015, she founded a nonprofit called Empowered Women. She has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. Criticism of Trump has been a component of McMullin’s campaign. In August 2015, she likened Trump to “an abusive boyfriend.” In January 2016, she said, "[Trump's] a master at propaganda. He’s a bully. And he’s dangerous.”
  • McMullin is on the ballot in 11 states and is registered as a write-in candidate in 23 others. On the states where his name will appear on the ballot, his running mate is currently listed as Nathan Johnson. McMullin’s campaign website said that Johnson is a “a close personal friend of Evan’s who agreed to serve as a placeholder because of the extraordinarily tight time-lines an insurgent campaign like ours entails.” According to ABC News, the McMullin campaign has a “legal plan” to replace Johnson’s name with Finn’s.

• Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) rejected the Clinton campaign’s request to extend the state's voter registration deadline past next Tuesday, October 11, in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. “Everybody has had a lot of time to register. On top of that, we have lots of opportunities to vote: early voting, absentee voting, Election Day. So I don’t intend to make any changes," Scott said.
  • See also: Voting in Florida

• President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 102 individuals. According to a White House press release, “The vast majority of today’s grants were for individuals serving unduly harsh sentences for drug-related crimes under outdated sentencing laws. With today’s grants, the President has commuted 774 sentences, more than the previous 11 presidents combined. With a total of 590 commutations this year, President Obama has now commuted the sentences of more individuals in one year than in any other single year in our nation’s history.”

State

• Ballotpedia published a preview of its analysis of state executive elections between 2011 and 2016. We found that 60.2 percent of incumbents ran for re-election on average. Of the 93 offices up for election in 2016, only 51 incumbents are running for re-election, or about 55 percent. Four years prior, when the same offices were up for election—94 seats were up in 2012—63 incumbents sought re-election, equal to 67 percent. However, both years saw a similar percentage of open elections due to term limits, indicating that more incumbents declined to run for re-election or are running for election to new offices in 2016 than in 2012.
• The New Mexico State Legislature adjourned its special session with a budget deal but no decision on the death penalty. Legislators approved a budget-cutting plan that will generate $327.8 million in savings for the current fiscal year. The state is currently facing a $458 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year that began in July 2016. The deficit was caused in part by larger-than-expected declines in oil and gas prices. In an early morning session, the New Mexico House of Representatives voted 36-30 to reinstate the death penalty, but the state Senate did not vote on the bill before the special session adjourned. The bill would have limited the use of lethal injection to those convicted of murdering a child or law enforcement officer. The death penalty was repealed in 2009 by then-Gov. Bill Richardson (D). The six-day special session cost more than $250,000. New Mexico currently has a divided government: Republicans hold both the governorship and state House, while Democrats control the state Senate.
  • Voters in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma will vote on death-penalty-related ballot measures in November.
    • In California, voters will decide two competing citizen initiatives, one to repeal the death penalty and one to revise and expedite the death penalty process.
    • Nebraska ballots will feature a veto referendum challenging the legislature’s decision to repeal the death penalty.
    • The Oklahoma Legislature put a question before voters about whether to protect the legality of the death penalty by putting it into their state constitution.
• President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court dismissed an appeal from retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices Ronald Castille and Stephen Zappala Sr. to challenge the ballot question for the amendment designed to increase the judicial retirement age from 70 to 75 appearing on the Pennsylvania ballot in November 2016. Castille and Zappala Sr., along with attorney Richard A. Sprague, alleged that the question on the ballot is "misleading" and "deceitful" because it states the proposed constitutional law—a retirement age of 75—but not the existing constitutional law—a retirement age of 70. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously heard the case and issued a 3-3 decision that allowed the amendment to remain on the ballot. The ballot question reads, "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require that justices of the Supreme Court, judges, and magisterial district judges be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 75 years?" The judicial retirement amendment is the only measure appearing on the ballot in Pennsylvania in November.
• Opponents of Amendment V in South Dakota urged the support campaign group, Vote Yes on V, to return contributions it received from Open Primaries and TakeItBack.org, claiming that the organizations solicited donations to specifically fund the amendment. In South Dakota, outside groups can contribute to ballot measure campaigns, but it is illegal for them to raise money for the express purpose of influencing or funding a ballot question. As of October 6, 2016, Vote Yes on V had raised more than $300,000, and about 72 percent of its funds were contributed by Open Primaries and TakeItBack.org. If approved, Amendment V would establish nonpartisan elections. It is one of 10 ballot measures that will appear on the ballot in South Dakota on November 8, 2016.

Preview of the day

There were no items for this day in issue #36 of The Tap, which was published on October 1, 2016. See the "Review of the day" tab for more information.