On Saturday, June 25, the Alaska Supreme Court agreed with a lower state court, that Tara Sweeney should not be on the special general election for U.S. House that will be held in August. See this story. The ballot will have three candidates, two Republicans and and one Democrat, and ranked choice voting will be used. Thanks to Mark Seidenberg for this news. The case is Guerin v State, S18457.
The only statewide races in Washington state this year are U.S. Senate and Secretary of State. All candidates run in the August 2 primary, and only the two top will appear on the November ballot. Filing has closed. Although there are many Democrats, Republicans, and independents who will be on the primary ballot for U.S. Senate, the only minor party with a candidate is the Socialist Workers Party, which is running Henry Clay Dennison. Here is a link to the Secretary of State’s candidate list.
In the U.S. House races, the only minor party candidates are an American Solidarity Party candidate in the 3rd district, and a Libertarian in the 8th district.
On June 24, Louisiana filed this reply brief in Ardoin v Robinson, 21A814, the case over the state’s U.S. House districts.
On June 10, the Federal Election Commission notified Howie Hawkins that he will not receive any primary season matching funds from his 2020 presidential campaign for the Green Party nomination. Although the FEC acknowledges that Howie received enough donations to qualify, it says he missed a procedural deadline.
On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 19-1392. It says that the U.S. Constitution has no applicability to any ban on abortion whatsoever. The decision leaves state legislatures the power to outlaw all abortions, even from the point of conception. If a legislature provides no exceptions whatsoever, even concerning the life or health of the pregnant woman, the Constitution has nothing to say about that.
Public opinion polls recently have shown substantial support for allowing early abortion, yet many state legislatures are, or have recently, shown that they want to ban even the earliest abortions. Therefore, it is somewhat likely that there will soon be many initiative petitions to repeal state legislative restrictions on certain abortions. But, the statewide initiative only exists in 22 states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Some might list Illinois, but realistically, Illinois does not have the statewide initiative process.
Democratic Party legislators are almost entirely pro-choice. Democratic state legislators also tend to be opposed to the initiative process. But as the initiative process becomes an important arena for pro-choice activism, this may lead more Democratic politicians to support the initiative process. States without the statewide initiative process, but which have Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature, are Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois realistically, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Perhaps a movement to create a national initiative process will arise.
