Tag: Ballot

The Medical Council ballot on Wednesday failed to pass any of four proposals aimed at fully exempting relevant overseas-trained specialists from internships Doctors rejected chairman Professor Joseph Lau’s claim that some council members had voted differently to what they had earlier stated Doctors have denied politics were to blame for the failure of a ballot to select proposals to attract more overseas doctors to Hong Kong. The Medical Council on Wednesday failed to pass any of the four proposals, which aimed to fully exempt internship requirements for overseas-trained specialists who have passed the city’s licensing exam. The new proposals aimed to further relax the requirements so as to relieve the overburdened public health care system, which is about 300 doctors short at any given time. The council’s chairman Professor Joseph Lau Wan-yee had suggested on Wednesday that some council members had voted differently despite saying they would like to relax the internship requirements. Lam added that, in general, there was a consensus among the medical sector on the need to relax the internship requirements. But the voting method had prevented the council from coming up with the best option for doing so. What is he thinking of … shifting the responsibility onto people who hold different opinions?” he added. Doctors’ argument for shutting out foreign competition does not stand up to scrutiny One of the four options would have required three years’ work experience with the Hospital Authority, either of the city’s two medical schools or the Department of Health, as well as passing the licensing exam during that time. Lam believed three members voted against all of the four proposals, resulting in all of the options falling short. Another council member Dr Ho Pak-leung also blamed the election method.

The proposal would change the state constitution to allow customers to choose their electricity providers and would limit the role of investor-owned electric utilities — private companies such as Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy Florida, Tampa Electric Co. and Gulf Power Co. — to constructing, operating and repairing transmission and distribution systems. Wilson noted that Florida utility rates were 25 percent lower than those of the average deregulated state last year. Indeed, private utility companies have slashed rates over the past couple of years — Panhandle electric co Gulf Power recently had a new rate plan approved that will see their customers pay a lower monthly bill than they did a decade ago. The company said more than half of its power will come from renewables by 2020. The Chamber’s stance was echoed in AIF’s Thursday release. AIF President Tom Feeney said his group was “staunchly opposed to the deregulation of Florida’s electric utility industry,” citing the the rate increases brought about in other states. It is very troubling a state like Florida that already has low electricity rates, would even consider electricity deregulation. While a handful of states chose this path 20 years ago, the electricity prices in these states are on average higher than those in Florida,” Quackenbush said. “In addition to higher prices, Florida consumers should be concerned about the potential for reduced reliability and aggressive and/or deceptive marketing tactics that this proposal to deregulate the electricity market would invite.” The Florida Chamber and AIF condemnations come as the initiative, known as “Right to Competitive Energy Market for Customers of Investor-Owned Utilities,” hit the threshold to be reviewed by the Attorney General and state Supreme Court. As of Thursday, the proposed amendment had 76,632 valid petition signatures.

A study group has been exploring whether the city should break with its long-established tradition of electing municipal and school board officials on odd-numbered years, instead of having them run in conjunction with federal, state and county candidates on even-numbered years Jeff Anderson, a member of the study group, said they will meet once more next week and then share their recommendations with the charter commission on Wednesday. Any time you can save a few hundred thousand dollars for taxpayers, that's a good thing," Anderson said. In 2015, the Duluth School Board sought to switch its elections to even years, but it was unable to do so because of a state statute that required its ballot to coincide with the city's. But former Duluth mayor Don Ness remains skeptical of moving away from the current off-year municipal election cycle out of concern that local races would be eclipsed by larger-scale campaigns. In the 2017 general election, fewer than 28 percent of registered voters in Duluth showed up at the polls. "I think Duluth benefits greatly from having local elections that people have the time and space to really focus on those races and to consider the candidates," Ness said. "I think we benefit from the additional attention given to city council, school board and mayoral races in the odd years," he said. Hobbs agreed it's highly unlikely that city council or mayoral candidates would be in a financial position to mount campaigns even remotely comparable to those seen at the congressional, presidential or even state levels. "It forces local candidates to work a little harder, which is probably a good thing, but I think there's also a little bit of concern about how you compete with that amount of money," he said. "Does it make down-ballot races more partisan?"

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s legal team says the number of uncounted vote-by-mail ballots exceeded incoming Sen. Rick Scott’s margin of victory when he defeated the incumbent in November. “Remember when we thought 6,670 mail ballots in Florida were rejected due to failure by the post office to deliver them in time to the counties?” said Nelson attorney Marc Elias on social media. “Well, we now know it was 6,882 ballots. Nelson lost by 10,033 votes.” But Jessica Furst Johnson, National Republican Senate Committee counsel, said Scott’s margin of victory remained insurmountable. Completely irresponsible to drag FL through a recount under those circumstances.” Nelson conceded the election on Nov. 18, 12 days after the election and after filing several lawsuits looking for more votes to be counted. Elias, who represented Democrats including former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and former Washington Gov. But a judge denied Nelson’s request to count ballots that arrived after Election Day but were postmarked before that time. But a number of election supervisors in the wake of three statewide recounts this year said mail channels have increasingly proven unreliable. Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, previously told Florida Politics the issue should be discussed as lawmakers revisit election reform this year. Ultimately, Scott’s narrow 10,033-vote margin of victory represented just 0.14 percent of the nearly 8.2 million votes cast and counted.

Early balloting was a topic of major interest following the 2018 midterm elections in Arizona. After races for the U.S. Senate, the superintendent of public instruction and secretary of state couldn't be called on Election Day, many people wondered about the impacts of early voting. This week's episode of "The Gaggle" podcast dives into the topic. The Republic's national political reporter, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, and congressional delegation reporter, Ronald J. Hansen, sit down with Garrett Archer, senior analyst for Arizona's secretary of state. Archer's Twitter posts regarding vote counts gained a national following in the days after Election Day. What you can learn from this episode: Why midterm results weren't ready on Election Day How early balloting has changed candidates' campaign strategies How and why campaigns can more precisely and effectively target voters today The role of social media and the Internet on election season Listen by clicking the play button above or searching for “The Gaggle: Journalists Talk Arizona Politics” on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher or your podcast-listening platform of choice.

Accusations of fraud as Florida Senate race between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson appears headed to a recount; reaction and analysis on 'The Five', with special guest co-hosts Dan Bongino and Marie Harf. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour…

As progressive reformers organized challenges to IDC-aligned senators in this years primaries, the group was disbanded. All eight state senators who had been associated with the IDC were challenged in Democratic primaries Thursday. The biggest victory for the challengers—and for the unions and grassroots activists with groups such as the Working Families Party and Citizen Action of New York that campaigned against the IDC-tied incumbents—was that of Alessandra Biaggi, who got a lot of street-level and social-media campaign help from Ocasio-Cortez for her challenge to a former IDC leader Jeffrey Klein. “There are five times as many Democrats as Republicans in District 34 and yet for seven years, my opponent led the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), a group of 8 New York state senators who ran and were elected as Democrats, but then went to Albany to caucus and vote only with Republicans, handing control of the State Senate to the GOP. The Climate Change and Community Protection Act. Biaggi, who ran with the support of The New York Times, as well as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, the Working Families Party, and Service Employees International Union local 32BJ, reminded voters that the election provided an opportunity to diversify the legislature and state politics. City & State New York noted that “Salazar ran on a platform of universal rent control and single-payer health care, but she made national headlines when media reports challenged the working class, immigrant, Jewish image Salazar presented on the campaign trail. Stories about Salazar’s past, which featured prominently in the city’s tabloid dailies, appeared to have little impact on the ground in New York’s Senate District 18, where she was pulling 58 percent of the vote after campaigning “as an advocate, a tenant, a feminist, a democratic socialist, a union member, and a proud daughter of an immigrant family.” Other progressive contenders—including Nixon and Williams, who came close to upsetting Cuomo’s running mate in the contest for lieutenant governor—ran with support from the New York City chapter of DSA. But Salazar campaigned as an active member of DSA’s largest local, which on Thursday night announced that “NYC-DSA has built a movement to send one of our own to Albany.” The change in Albany will be dramatic as a new generation of insurgents and reformers arrives. And the legislature will be populated by a state senators like Alessandra Biaggi, who claimed her victory as a signal that New Yorkers would no longer “tolerate Democrats who would be empowering Republicans.”

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green ruled that Amendment 1, known as Clean Missouri, dealt with "two different and extremely broad purposes," which violates the Missouri Constitution. Attorney Chuck Hatfield, who represents the Clean Missouri campaign, said in a statement that the campaign will appeal the ruling immediately. "We have always thought that this legal matter would be decided at the Appeals Court level," Hatfield said. The petition would have amended the Missouri Constitution to: Drastically change the process and criteria for drawing state legislative districts. Require state legislators to wait two years after they have left the General Assembly to become paid lobbyists. Require state legislators to be subject to Missouri's open-records law. In Green’s ruling, he said that the proposed changes to the Missouri Constitution covered two different purposes: "(1) the organization of the General Assembly; and (2) ethics or campaign finance regulation aimed at avoiding misconduct by public officials in multiple branches and levels of government." Two weeks ago, attorneys representing Clean Missouri and Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, whose office approves ballot measures, insisted that the proposed amendment dealt with one issue: accountability measures for the Missouri legislature. At the hearing, Green stressed that his judgment was not on the proposal's value, but whether it met the the requirements of the Missouri Constitution. While Conway said she was in favor of transparency, she couldn't support the petition's proposed redistricting process, in which "nobody’s interest is going to be served."

An attempt to add a conservative candidate to the ballot for Iowa attorney general appears to have failed, dealing a blow to rightwingers seeking to make the death of student Mollie Tibbetts an election issue in November. 'This is about Mollie': many who knew Tibbetts reject Trump's politicising of murder Read more Tibbetts, 20, was out running near Brooklyn, Iowa when she was last seen, on the evening of 18 July. A funeral mass was held for Tibbetts on Sunday, in the gymnasium of BGM high school in Brooklyn, a city of 1,500 where she grew up. Hundreds of people attended. Bishop Thomas Zinkula of Davenport, Iowa, led proceedings. Cristhian Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in Tibbetts’ death. Investigators say the 24-year-old Mexican farmworker led them to a cornfield Tuesday where Tibbetts’ body had been left since her July 18 disappearance. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc, then GOP could lose [the] House badly.” Despite appeals by Tibbetts family members and friends that such nakedly political activity should stop, an attempt was mounted locally to put Patrick Anderson, of Des Moines, on the Iowa ballot for attorney general as a non-party candidate. The incumbent Democratic attorney general, Tom Miller, is running unopposed. The attempt to run Anderson therefore planned to list “GOP” beside his name.

Our view: We understand elected leaders are loyal to their party and its mission. But there is a time for politics and there is a time for our elected leaders to put aside politics. When it comes to putting constitutional amendments on our state ballots, the goal should be making the meaning of each amendment as plain as possible to the voter. Why we believe that: This week, House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, raised questions about a commission responsible for writing introductions to the six constitutional amendments being prepared for a state ballot. A press release from Moore’s office states: State lawmakers already provided short titles and ballot questions for the six constitutional amendments that clearly and concisely describe the proposals. Opposition to the proposals, however, is fueling political influence on the Constitutional Amendments Publication Commission charged with accurately describing the questions with apolitical captions for voters. So, there’s no way to know if that phrases will meet the acceptance of the Republican-led General Assembly. Is it a surprise that commission is chaired by a Democrat and has a Democrat majority? That’s decided. Sometimes, it seems, both sides forget they are in Raleigh on our behalf, not their own.