There are at least two election law cases filed in 2002 by minor parties or independent candidates that are still pending. One is the Alabama case filed by an independent candidate against Alabama’s 3% (of the last vote cast) petition. That has a hearing in the 11th circuit in Atlanta on March 20.
The other is the Arizona Libertarian Party’s case against a state law that forces the party to let independent voters vote in its primary. That case is still in U.S. District Court. Both sides have been waiting for over a year for the Judge to issue his opinion.
That’s Arizona Libertarian Party v. Bayless. The law was passed by initiative.
When I phoned the Arizona secretary of state’s office a few years ago to ask about this law, the rude woman who answered kept referring to it as “the open primary.”
The “top two” system proposed in the failed 2004 initiative in California was called an “open primary” (a popular term!) by many locals there. In endorsing the California initiative, Sen. John McCain said– paraphrasing–, “My state of Arizona already has an open primary.”
So McCain made it sound as though the “top two” and a semi-closed primary are the same thing. Wonder if he really thought that.