On August 4, the New Jersey Supreme Court accepted the Libertarian Party ballot access case, and agreed to expedite its decision. It will apparently also decide whether the out-of-state circulator ban for general election petitions is constitutional or not. See this story.
On August 4, Washington held its top-two primary. No statewide offices were up. For the ten U.S. House seats, each race produced a Democratic-Republican race in November. In the Tenth District, shama Sawant, an independent socialist and former Seattle city councilmember, placed third. See the results here.
The United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is a strong supporter of proportional representation. See this article from the Electoral Reform Society.
On August 4, the New Jersey lawsuit over primary election ballot format came to an end. Kim v Hanlon, 3:24cv-1098. The lawsuit had been filed in 2024 to overturn the practice of giving some primary candidates are better spot on the primary ballot than certain other candidates. The old discriminatory law had been enjoined in 2024, and the legislature had then passed legislation improving primary ballot format. Lawsuits over ballot format in New Jersey are complicated, because each county sets its own format. Bergen County, like the other counties that had been sued, finally conceded that the old discriminatory format will never again be used.
Now that it is settled that the old primary ballot format is unconstitutional, it should be possible for New Jersey minor parties to sue over the same problem that affects general election ballots. In most New Jersey counties, the November ballot has party columns. There is a Democratic column, and a Republican column, and a column headed by the words “Nomination by Petition” on the right edge of the ballot. All candidates who are neither Republican nor Democratic nominees are squeezed into this third column. The format encourages the ordinary voter to not even notice the candidates in that third column. That is why the average Libertarian or Green percentage of the vote for down-ballot candidates is consistently a lower percentage than the Libertarian and Green percentages for the same office in all other states.
Here is the document that ends the lawsuit.
This news story quotes Lindsey Drath, CEO of the Forward Party, as saying that the Forward Party will work to improve ballot access laws. One might think this would be obvious, but until recently the Forward Party has not been active in efforts to ease ballot access laws. Currently it has a strong lawsuit against the New Mexico ballot access laws, which marks a good beginning. The New Mexico lawsuit takes aim at the unique New Mexico law that says even after a minor party gains qualified status, it must submit a nominee petition for each of its nominees (except the law doesn’t apply to presidential nominees).
The part of the article that quotes Drath is toward the end of the article. The article is mainly about the Idaho U.S. Senate race, in which there is no Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and Democrats intend to support an independent candidate. Then the story talks about the Forward Party and its support for that independent candidate.
