On September 21, U.S. District Court Judge Franklin Valderrama, a Trump appointee, upheld the Illinois 5% (of the last vote cast) petition requirement for independent candidates for U.S. House. Sigcho-Lopez v Illinois State Board of Elections, n.d., 1:26cv-9156. The plaintiff, a Chicago city councilmember, had submitted 17,227 signatures to meet a requirement of 10,816 signatures. He fell 1,222 signatures short because the invalidity rate was high. It is extremely common for validity rates for petitions to be high if the office is a district office. A large number of signatures invariably are from voters who live outside the district, especially when the district is not compact and has jagged boundaries.

The only state interest cited by the judge is the need to avoid crowded ballots and to “protect the integrity of elections.” But the decision does not discuss the meaning of a “crowded ballot.” Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions discuss that, but the decision does not cite either one. In Williams v Rhodes, the concurrence by Justice Harlan says that having eight candidates on the ballot for a single office does not cause a ballot that is likely to confuse any voter. In Lubin v Panish the Court defined a crowded ballot as one with at least a dozen or two dozen candidates for the same office.

Illinois has not had a U.S. House general election with more than four candidates on the ballot in the entire history of the 5% petition requirement (except in 1996, the 7th district had five candidates). It is bizarre that any sincere person can believe that Illlinois is in danger of crowded general election ballots for U.S. House.

The decision also upholds the 90-day window for collecting the signatures, the law that won’t let primary circulators work for general election candidates, and the notarization requirement. Here is the opinion.

The decision says that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’ independent petition requirement for district office of either 3% or 5% of the last vote (depending on the office), but does not say that Texas law capped all independent petitions for district and local office at exactly 500 signatures.

Illinois law says an independent is not permitted to submit more than 8% of the last vote cast. In this case, Sigcho-Lopez was not permitted to submit more than 17,304. At the oral argument, the judge had asked the state why it was necessary to have a ceiling, and the response was “I don’t know.” But the decision does not discuss the ceiling requirement.

On September 21, the Eighth Circuit ruled that Missouri must use the 2025 maps, instead of the 2022 maps, for its U.S. House elections. Onder v State of Missouri and Hoskins, 26-2797. Here is the decision, which is 3-0. The decision is quite surprising, because Missouri has already been mailing out its general election ballots to overseas absentee voters.

The opinion is based on the idea that because the 2026 primary used the 2025 districts, the general election must use the same maps. Page 23 attempts to say that the primary is intrinsic to the general election. As other courts in this case have done, the decision truncates Missouri code section 115.339 to assert that all candidates in Missouri must be nominated by primary. But the law says new parties nominate by convention. Also, independent candidates are not nominated by primary either. The opinion tries to disguise this by not quoting the entire sentence of the law. The words in the law that the court does not mention are at the beginning: “Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter…”

Massachusetts voters will see an initiative on their November ballot for a top-two system.

Here is the website of the supporters, yeson3ma.org.

Here is the website of the opponents, votenoon3mass.com.

Also, Progressive Massachusetts has a portion of its website in opposition to Question Three. It has links to scholarly articles that find top-two does not improve elections. See it here.

Top-two has been defeated by voters seven times, and has passed twice, in California in 2010 and Washington in 2004. Its losses were in California in 2004, Oregon 2008, Arizona 2012, Oregon again 2014, South Dakota 2016, Florida 2020, and South Dakota 2024. In all these ballot battles, supporters of top-two always significantly outspent opponents, sometimes even ten to one.

UPDATE: Massachusetts sends a pamphlet “Information for Voters” to every registered voter, with arguments for and against each statewide ballot measure. Here is the portion of the booklet about Question Three.