On December 1, 2021, Jill Stein, Green Party presidential nominee in 2016, filed a Statement of Issues in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. She is asking the Court to amend or reverse the Federal Election Commission decision earlier this year that she must repay $175,272 in 2016 primary season matching funds. See it here.
The text of the Missouri top-four initiative can be seen here, from the Secretary of State’s website. It is initiative 2022-051.
The initiative also deals with vote-counting equipment. Missouri requires initiatives to be single-subject.
An earlier version of the initiative provided that party labels should not be on ballots, but the latest version does permit party labels.
The Nevada Current has this story about the top-five initiative that will soon be circulating in Nevada.
Like other initiatives for top-two, top-four, and top-five, this one eliminates the easier method for a party to remain ballot-qualified. If the Nevada initiative became law, parties could no longer stay on the ballot by polling 1% of the statewide vote for any office. The vote test would shrink down to just president, and there would be no vote test at all in midterm years.
So far, all attempts to persuade top-anything proponents to address the problem have failed. One leader of the top-anything movement communicated via e-mail that it is “too late” to fix this problem in the group’s Missouri initiative.
On December 3, the Georgia Libertarian Party filed this brief in Cowen v Raffensperger, 21-13199. This is the case over the 5% petition for independent candidates, and the nominees of parties that didn’t poll 20% for president in the entire US or 20% for Governor of Georgia, for district and county office. The U.S. District Court had struck it down.
All the briefs are now in, and the hearing will be December 17.
On November 29, James R. Adams filed a second amended Complaint in Adams v Carney, 1:20cv-1680. This is the case over the Delaware law that says no one may serve on an important state court unless he or she is a member of one of the two largest parties. Adams is an independent.
Adams already won this case earlier, but then the state appealed and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he didn’t have standing because he hadn’t specifically said he wanted to be a judge. In his latest complaint, he makes it clear that he does want a judicial appointment.
