The Kansas House Elections Committee has introduced HB 2447, to restore presidential primaries for parties that have primaries. In Kansas, only the Republican and Democratic Parties have primaries. Other qualified parties nominate by convention, so the bill will have no effect on them if it passes.
The New York Times of january 28 has a story “Shootings pose conservatism debate”. At the very end of the article, it mentions libertarians and the Libertarian Party, in a most deceiving fashion. First it says that libertarians are critical of how ICE treats protesters in Minneapolis, quoting Walter Olson of CATO. But then it says, “But even among libertarians, there is disagreement. Angela McArdle, a former chair of the Libertarian Party, argued this weekend that the nation was in crisis mode and that now was not a time for libertarians to stick so strictly to their ideology. It quotes her as saying, “The threat of mass migration is civilizational. If we don’t deport illegal aliens and stop Democrat fraud we will be Canada in less than ten years.”
The reporter completely ignored the position of the Libertarian Party, issued by current national chair Stephen Nekhaila on January 24. It says that ICE should be abolished.
On January 27, a Missouri House legislative committee deleted provisions for the return of presidential primaries from an omnibus election law bill. The sponsor of the bill, Representative Peggy McGaugh, said she will try to restore the provision when her bill, HB 1871, is being debated on the House floor.
Primaries would cost $9,000,000, and some legislators don’t want to spend the money. Missouri stopped holding presidential primaries in 2022.
Last year, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville announced he is running for Governor of Alabama in 2026. President Trump endorsed him for that position on January 22. However, the Alabama Constitution rquires Governors to have lived in the state for seven years, and many believe that he does not meet that qualification. See this story.
On January 26, South Dakota filed this reply brief in the Eighth Circuit in Dakotans for Health v Johnson, 25-2940. The issue is the February deadline for initiative petitions. The U.S. District Court had invalidated it. The state’s brief says that the state needs the early deadline because sometimes individuals challenge a decision that the initiative has enough signatures, and if there is such a challenge, every signature must be checked (the initial determination of whether an initiative has enough valid signatures uses a random sampling, which doesn’t take nearly as long as checking every signatures does).
