The Guardian has this story about the Working Families Party. The party has 100 staff members and is now organized in 18 states. In partisan elections it continues its policy of generally nominating candidates who are also Democratic Party nominees. But it frequently intervenes in Democratic primaries. It does run its own nominees in non-partisan elections, and in jurisdictions with limited voting. Limited voting systems prevent any party from running nominees for all the seats up.
The Carolina Journal has this interesting article about a pending lawsuit in the North Carolina State Court of Appeals, on whether the state constitution prohibits gerrymandering. The state constitution says all elections shall be “free.” Bard v North Carolina State Board of Elections, COA24-1109.
Thirty state constitutions say that elections must be free and equal, or sometimes they just say they must be “free”. Generally lawsuits filed to strike down unfair election rules seldom win on the basis of that phrase. Judges appear to find that it is too vague.
In 2023, the New York legislature passed a bill moving most local elections (but not New York City elections) from November of odd years, to November of even years. A federal lawsuit against this law was filed in October 2025. The plaintiffs have added many more co-plaintiffs since then, including many local governments. On December 29 they filed an amended complaint reflecting the additional plaintiffs. The first-named lawsuit continues to be the Republican Party of New York.
The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Gary R. Brown, a rare judge who was nominated by both a Democratic president and a Republican president. President Obama first nominated him, but he didn’t get confirmed by the U.S. Senate. But then President Trump also nominated him.
The case is New York Republican State Committee v Hochul, e.d., 2:25cv-6083.
The Complaint says that combining local elections with congressional elections will mean that voters won’t pay much attention to the local races, because the races for federal and state office will soak up all the attention. There really is no precedent that combining local elections with federal and state elections violates the Constitution. The plaintiffs rely on the First Amendment. Here is the amended complaint.
On December 18, New York City Councilmember Frank Morano introduced a bill to make elections for New York City office non-partisan. No party labels would be on the ballot. Ranked choice voting would be used. There would be no primary.
Most cities in the U.S. use non-partisan elections for city office, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, and Dallas. New York City and Philadelphia are the only really populous cities that use partisan elections.
Thom Hartmann, a well-known host of a radio show about politics, and editor of The Hartmann Report, a daily newsletter about politics, said on December 30 that Donald Trump only won the presidency in 2016 because of Jill Stein’s Green Party candidacy. He said, “Stein had no such moral compunction with her Green Party candidacy in 2016. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin provided Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College over Hillary Clinton that year, and, in each of the states, Stein polled more votes than Trump’s margin.”
Hartmann appears not to know about the 2016 exit polls, even though they have been widely reported. The New York Times mentioned them in a 2023 article about Cornel West, and there are many other media mentions from late in 2016. The exit pollsters asked Stein Voters whom they would have voted for if only Trump and Clinton had been on the ballot. 25% said they would have voted for Hillary Clinton, but 14% said they would have voted for Donald Trump. Therefore, when one does the arithmetic, one finds that Stein voters did not change the electoral vote outcome in any state.
