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.
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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.
On October 24, the Third Circuit voted 8-6 not to rehear Eakin v Adams County Board of Elections, 25-1644. This is the case over Pennsylvania postal absentee ballots, and whether a voter who forgets to fill out the date on the outer envelope loses his or her vote as a result.
The Octdober 26 Denver Post has a lengthy news story about the new leadership of the Colorado Libertarian Party. It says that former state chair Hannah Goodman, a stalwart of the Mises Caucus, says she will leave the party and become a Democrat.