Shelley Lenz, the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of North Dakota in 2020, will run as an independent candidate for the State Senate this year. See this story.

North Dakota has very difficult ballot access for minor party and independent candidates for state legislature. The minor party requirement is so difficult, no minor party nominee for legislature has been able to qualify since 1976. The law does not allow minor parties to nominate for legislature unless approximately 11% of all the primary voters choose the minor party’s primary ballot.

The independent candidate procedures are also difficult. Independents need a petition of 300 signatures, which represents approximately 4% of the number of voters who voted for president in the typical legislative district in 2020. Very few independent candidates for the legislature qualify. In 2018 and also in 2020, only one did so.

On March 18, the Alaska bill that eases the definition of a qualified party passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Existing law requires a party to have registration equal to 3% of the last vote cast, which is now 10,821. The bill changes this to exactly 5,000 registered members. The bill also says that after each census (starting with 2030) the number of registered voters will be increased by the percentage at which the state grew since the last census, rounded to the nearest 500. So if the bill becomes law, perhaps starting in 2030 the requirement would increase to 5,500 or 6,000.

Alaska U.S. House member Don Young died March 18. According to this story, state law requires a special primary within three months of the death, followed by a special general election.

The top-four system, passed in November 2020, will be used for the special election. That will be the first time that it has been used.

It is somewhat plausible that the special primary will be June 16 and the special general election will be August 16. The regularly-scheduled primary is also August 16.

That will mean that on August 16, Alaska voters will use ranked-choice voting for the special general election, but they will not use ranked choice voting for the regularly-scheduled primary. For some reasons, the top-four backers wrote their initiative to use ranked choice voting in the general election, but not the primary.

Don Young was a Republican who was known for getting along with Democrats in Congress and working in a bipartisan fashion. It will be ironic if he is replaced by a more partisan Republican. Supporters of top-four systems insist, with no evidence, that top-four systems produce more moderate, centrist politicians.