On March 17, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed SB 63, the bill that prohibits any local government from using Ranked Choice Voting for elections for its own officers.
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The New Jersey Supreme Court refused to hear the fusion lawsuit, In re Tom Malinowski, on December 9, 2025. The plaintiffs asked for rehearing on January 9, 2026. The State Supreme Court hasn’t yet responded. Usually courts deny requests for rehearing within a few weeks.
This news story about the Libertarian Party’s Montana candidates notes that there is a contested Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate.
On March 18, a UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll was released for the California gubernatorial race. Like the preceding polls, it shows that Xavier Becerra is ahead of Matt Mahan. Yet the upcoming March 24 gubernatorial debate, sponsored by USC, includes Mahan and excludes Becerra. The poll shows Becerra at 5% and Mahan at 4%. Antonio Villaraigosa, another excluded candidate, is also at 4%.
See this story about the new poll. The new poll shows the two Republicans in first and second place.
On March 17, the Alabama House Ethics & Campaign Finance Committee passed HB 541, which switches Alabama from an open primary state to a closed primary state. The bill is flawed because it would only let voters register into a qualified party. Courts in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma have ruled that if states let people register into political parties on their voter registration form, they must let voters register into unqualified parties.