CTV News has this story about the leading minor party and independent presidential candidates in the U.S. Thanks to Chris Cole for the link.
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For the first time since 2000, there are more Democratic Party nominees for Georgia legislature than there are Republican nominees.
This parallels an earlier blog post that there are more Democratic nominees for Florida legislature, than Republicans, for the first time since 1994.
On Friday, October 2, Maine Republican opponents of ranked choice voting asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop use of ranked choice voting for president. Here is the brief. Jones v Dunlap, 20A57. The merits of the case do not concern ranked choice voting, but the constitutionality of the Maine law that kept the referendum petition off the ballot. That law requires referendum petitioners to be registered voters.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida recommends a “no” vote on Amendment Three, the top-two initiative. See the ACLU statement here.
On October 1, after another oral argument, the Maine State Supreme Judicial Court refused to stay its earlier opinion about the Republican Party-sponsored referendum petition on ranked choice voting for president. Now the Maine Republicans are expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
The issue is not about the validity of ranked choice voting. It is about whether the Republican referendum petition should have been accepted by the Secretary of State. The petition had enough valid signatures, but some of the signatures were disallowed because some circulators were not registered to vote in the town in which they were working, when they started working (later they changed their registration to comply with the law). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that states can’t require petitioners to be registered voters, so the Maine Supreme Court did not follow binding precedent.