On December 18, a Texas trial court ordered the Republican Party to list David Rogers on its primary ballot. He is running for State Supreme Court, place 8. Texas elects its State Supreme Court justices in partisan elections.

Statewide judicial candidates in primaries need 50 signatures from each of the fifteen state court of appeals districts. The party had originally denied Rogers a place on the ballot because one of the petition sheets had a blank for the circulator to print her name, but she accidentally filled in that blank with the county name instead. But Texas precedent is clear that such minor problems do not invalidate petitions, if the petition was signed by the necessary number of validly registered voters. Rogers v Hooper, Travis County, 98th judicial district court, D-1-GN-25-10912.

Rogers is running in the primary against an incumbent, Brett Busby. UPDATE: in a further legal development, David Rogers is off the ballot.

On December 18, Civic Lens Research released a California gubernatorial poll. The three leading contenders are: Steve Hilton 17.8%, Chad Bianco 13.9%, and Eric Swalwell 12.2%. See here.
Hilton and Bianco are Republicans.

A Sacramento Bee news story about this poll that is behind a pay wall says that Democratic Party leaders anticipate spending a large amount of money to simultaneously boost one of the two leading Republicans, and tear down the other one. That would presumably lessen the chances that both Republicans would place first and second. The story doesn’t say which of the two Republicans would get the boost and which one would be attacked.

On December 19, the Maine Green Party filed paperwork with the Maine Secretary of State, letting the state know that the party wants independent voters to sign petitions for Green Party primary candidates. Because Maine has very difficult primary petition requirements, this will help the party to run candidates in its own primary. The state requires primary candidates to submit 2,000 signatures for statewide office, which is very difficult for a party that doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of members. But if independent voters can sign, the burden is lessened. 32.1% of the Maine voters are registered independents.

Ever since the Green Party has been a qualified party in Maine, the primary petition hurdle has kept it from running anyone for either house of Congress. Hopefully that will now change. The procedure by which independents can sign primary petitions (for those parties that desire that) was only created this year.

Maine has ranked choice voting in general elections for congress.