On August 23, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly dismissed the lawsuit Gonzales v Madigan, n.d., 1:16cv-7915. It had been filed in 2016 by one of Michael Madigan’s opponents in the Democratic primary. Madigan is a member of the Illinois House of Representatives. He has been speaker for 33 years and is also chair of the Illinois Democratic Party. His district has been tending toward being a majority-Hispanic district. In the 2016 primary, Madigan appears to have recruited two candidates with Latino names to run against him, to divide the Hispanic vote, and defeat Jason Gonzales. Madigan won the primary.

In 1973, the Seventh Circuit had ruled in Smith v Cherry that when a sham candidate is recruited, that is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Gonzales depended on that precedent, and filed a federal lawsuit against Madigan. But after three years of complicated proceedings in the Gonzales case, the judge dismissed it on the grounds that during the 2016 primary campaign, the charge that two of the candidates were sham candidates had been widely publicized. Here is the 19-page decision.

Portland, Maine, already used ranked choice voting for Mayor. An initiative petition to use it for city council races appears to have fallen short by a few hundred signatures, although that determination is mired in controversy. See this story.

On August 22, the Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and America’s Party filed this brief in the Texas ballot access case, Miller v Doe, w.d., 1:19cv-700. The brief is in response to the state’s earlier brief, asking that this case be dismissed without further proceedings. The lawsuit challenges virtually every Texas ballot access requirement that applies to newly-qualifying parties, to parties that are already on the ballot but which nominate by convention, and to independent candidates.