On March 10, New Hampshire held a special election to fill the vacant State House seat in the Carroll County 7th district. The results: Democratic 51.9%; Republican 48.1%. When this seat had last been up, in November 2024, the results had been: Republican 56.8%; Democratic 43.2%.
On March 11, the Delaware Senate Executive Committee heard Delaware HB 65. It moves the non-presidential primary from September to the date of the presidential primary, whatever that date of the presidential primary turns out to be; the bill doesn’t specify. Currently the Delaware presidential primaries are in April but they might be moved to an earlier month. HB 65 passed the House last year. Delaware has two-year legislative sessions.
If this bill passes, the deadline for a group to qualify a new party will be much earlier, possibly even as early as January of the election year. This is because the deadline for a new party to qualify is tied to the date of the non-presidential primary. Delaware is in the Third Circuit, which ruled in 1997 in Council of Alternative Parties v Hooks that the New Jersey deadline for new party candidates could not be earlier than the date of the non-presidential primary. 121 F 3d 876.
On March 3, seventeen Alabama representatives, all Republicans, introduced HB 541. It mandates closed primaries, and does not give a party the option to let independents vote in its primary. It also sets very restrictive for voters to enroll in parties. They could register into a party that is entitled to its own primary. Thus, even if a new party got on the ballot, no one could register into it until after it had polled 20% of the vote for a statewide office. See page six of the bill.
The House Committee on Ethics and Campaign Finance heard the bill on March 11. See this story.
Courts in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma have ruled that it violates the First Amendment to forbid a voter from registering into an unqualified party.
On March 10, independent candidate Matthew Dumpert was elected to the Oakland, New Jersey, city council, in a partisan special election. See this story. It is very rare for independent candidates to win partisan elections in New Jerwey. Dumpert defeated his only opponent, the Republican incumbent. The election was held because the same seat had resulted in a tie vote in the November 2025 election.
On February 27, Bo Gritz died at the age of 87. He was the Populist Party’s presidential nominee in 1992. For someone who was not famous, he polled a surprisingly large share of the vote in certain places in Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Louisiana. He received 11.8% in Duchesne County, Htah, and 12.40% in Franklin County, Idaho. Nationwide he polled 107,014, the highest presidential vote the Populist Party ever polled. The New York Times carried an obituary for him on March 10.
He tried to get the American Independent Party nomination in California, but the AIP nominated Howard Phillips instead. Gritz mischeviously met with Phillips and AIP leaders and tried to get them to agree to settle the nomination with a coin toss. But that idea was rejected. Here is an obituary from a Nevada news source.
