On January 4, initiative proponents asked a U.S. District Court in Montana to reconsider its earlier opinion upholding the ban on out-of-state circulators for initiatives. See their filing here. Pierce v Stapleton, 6:18cv-63.
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At the November 2020 election, Green Party nominee K. Frederick Horch polled 48.06% of the vote for Maine State House, 49th district. He was in a two-person race against a Democrat. This is the closest the Green Party has come to electing a state legislator since 2012, when it elected Fred Smith in Arkansas. However, Smith was the only candidate whose name was on the ballot. Setting that 2012 Arkansas race aside, the most recent instance when a Green Party legislative nominee came close to winning was in 2010, when Massachusetts Green Party nominee Mark C. Miller polled 45.02% in a two-person race.
Maine does not use ranked choice voting for state office in general elections.
On Saturday evening, January 2, the Fifth Circuit issued a one-page opinion in Gohmert v Pence, 21-40001. They agreed with the U.S. District Court that the plaintiffs, Congressman Louie Gohmert and the Arizona Republican presidential elector candidates, lack standing to challenge the constitutionality of the 1887 electoral vote act. The appeal had been filed very early in the day on January 2, so this is a rare case of a lawsuit appeal filed and decided on the same day.
The three judges were Patrick Higginbotham and Jerry E. Smith (Reagan appointees), and Andrew Oldham (a Trump appointee).
The new Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, was sworn in on January 2, 2021. His inaugural speech included a vow to work for statehood. He is a Democrat. See this story.
The Puerto Rico representative to the U.S. House, Jenniffer Gonzalez, is a Republican, and she also will work for statehood. As noted earlier, on November 3 the ballot question on statehood passed by four percentage points.
On November 3, 2020, the Conservative Party won the vote for New York Assemblymember, 48th district. There was only one candidate listed on the ballot, Simcha Eichenstein. He was the nominee of the Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. It is very common in New York for minor party candidates to jointly nominate major party nominees. Eicnehstein is a Democrat.
But, the Conservative Party vote was higher in this race than the Democratic vote. Eichenstein polled 13,411 votes on the Conservative line and 12,570 on the Democratic line. This is the first time in the Conservative Party’s history that it had polled a larger vote than any other party in the same race (in any election for federal or state office), except in 1970, when its vote in the U.S. Senate race for James Buckley was higher than the vote for any other party. Buckley was a registered Republican and he won the race. Generally, the 1970 U.S. Senate election is considered a win for the Conservative Party, because its vote was higher than that for any other party. So, by the same logic, it seems that the 2020 race for Assembly, 48th district, was also a Conservative Party win.
There have been members of the U.S. House who were enrolled Conservative Party members, but no one ever listed those instances as “wins” for the Conservative Party, because in all those races, the Republican vote was substantially higher than the Conservative Party vote.
No news outlet seems to have reported that the Conservative Party vote in the 48th district was the highest of any party’s vote.