Tacoma Weekly, a free weekly newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, has this editorial, expressing the idea that top-two election systems are a bad idea because they eviscerate minor parties. Tacoma Weekly has existed since 1987. Thanks to J. Mills for the link.

On April 30, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who is widely expected to be the Libertarian Party presidential nominee this year, endorsed former California Superior Court Judge Jim Gray for the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nomination. Gray was appointed to the Superior Court in 1989 by California Governor George Deukmejian, and served as a Judge until 2010. Gray had previously served as a Municipal Court Judge in Santa Ana, California. In 2004, when Gray was the party’s U.S. Senate nominee in 2004, he took a leave of absence. Gray polled 216,522 votes for U.S. Senate in 2004. His best showing was in Mendocino County, where he polled 5.2%. Here is Gray’s wiki page. He is age 67. For more about Gray, see here.

On other Libertarian presidential campaign news, Wes Benedict and Arthur DiBianca, two Texas Libertarians, have founded the “Libertarian Action Super PAC”, also known as LASPAC. It has already received $100,000 in contributions, and plans to make independent expenditures to promote the Libertarian presidential ticket. Donations to such committees are unlimited, as long as the committee does not coordinate with the candidate.

Texas holds non-partisan city elections on May 12, and then on May 29 holds its partisan primaries for all partisan office, including President. Having two separate kinds of election only 17 days apart has consequences that are explained in this article.