On August 27, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the initiative to establish a top-four system should not appear on the ballot. The same decision also removed an initiative to set up a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Arkansas Voters First and Open Primaries Arkansas v Thurston, cv-20-454.

The initiative proponents were required to certify that they had checked the criminal record of all paid circulators and that they all were free of having a criminal record. Instead, they certified that they had checked the criminal records, but made a technical error and didn’t say what the results of the background checks were. This is a very abstruse reason to reject any petition. The vote was 6-1. Here is the decision.

The top-four system would have ended the ability of parties to have nominees for office other than president. One result would have been to make it more difficult for a qualified party to remain on the ballot. If the measure had been on the ballot and had passed, the only way a party could remain on the ballot would be polling 3% for president. This is a severe test. In the last 100 years, the only parties, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which have polled at least 3% for president in the nation have been the Progressive Party of 1924, the American Party (also called American Independent Party) of 1968, the Reform Party of 1996, and the Libertarian Party in 2016.

On August 28, the Georgia Libertarian Party filed its opening brief in Cowen v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:17cv-4660. This is the case against the Georgia law on how non-Republicans and non-Democrats get on the ballot for U.S. House. The case was filed in 2017 and the U.S. District Court upheld it in 2019. Then the Eleventh Circuit sent it back to the U.S. District Court and said to adjudicate the case based on the evidence. This brief summarizes that evidence, which is devastating to the state. The law was created in 1943 and in 77 years has never been used by a minor party candidate.

On August 27, a Washington state trial court ruled that if an individual signs more than one presidential petition, none of the signatures count. As a result, the Constitution, Alliance, and American Solidarity Parties are off the ballot for president. The case was Wyman v Alliance Party, Thurston County superior court.