As reported earlier, last week the North Carolina legislature redrew the U.S. House district boundaries. On October 27, some voters who had already been challenging the old district boundaries filed an amended complaint to challenge the new districts as well. Here is the filing. Williams v Hall, m.d., 1:23cv-1057. The case is before a 3-judge panel consisting of Judges Thomas Schroeder, Allison Rushing, and Richard E. Myers.
Congressmember Randy Fine (R-Florida) has introduced HR 5817. It says no one may be elected to Congress who is citizen of both the United States and some other nation. Here is the text. It would be unconstitutional under the U.S. Supreme Court decision U.S. Term Limits v Thornton. That decision said neither Congress nor any state may add to the qualifications listed in the U.S. Constitution.
WHYY, a public television station in Philadelphia that also covers southern New Jersey, has this article about the Socialist Workers Party nominee for Governor of New Jersey. It is unusual for SWP candidates to get this type of media attention.
An Oregon initiative called the “Voter Fairness Act” will begin to circulate soon. It would amend the State Constitution to say that there should be a system in which parties must either nominate by convention, or participate in a primary that is open to all voters. A party would decide 250 days before an election whether it wants to have nominees, but if it does, it can only nominate them by convention at its own expense. If it doesn’t want to do that, its candidates would run in a May primary in which candidates from all the non-convention parties would run. It would be up to the legislature to choose how many primary candidates would advance to the general election.
Here is the text, which is proposal 55.
The New York Libertarian Party held a state convention in Rochester on October 25, and nominated Larry Sharpe for Governor. Sharpe was also the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2018, when he polled 95,033 votes and gave the Libertarians party status for the first time in history. However, that was taken away in 2020 when the legislature changed the definition of a qualified party to a group that polled 2% for Governor. Sharpe had polled 1.56% in 2018.
Sharpe has been campaigning for the 2026 election for weeks. He is planning to visit all 62 counties. The party’s state convention was unusually early, but the party will need 45,000 valid signatures to get Sharpe on the 2026 ballot, and it wants to get an early start on the campaign. The petitioning period is only six weeks, in April and May 2026. It is likely that a lawsuit will be filed against the short petitioning period and the early deadline. New York’s deadline had been in August, until it was moved to May in 2019.
