On April 2, Ashland, Wisconsin, held a non-partisan election for city office. Wahsayah Whitebird was elected in ward six. He is a member of the Communist Party, and he defeated the incumbent, David Mettille. The vote was 52-42. Here is an article in the Peoples World about this election.
Ashland has a population of 8,216. The city council has twelve members.
On May 6, the Libertarian Party of Kentucky filed this brief in support of injunctive relief, against the new law requiring candidates of parties that nominate by convention to have filed a declaration of candidacy in January of an election year. Sweeney v Crigler, e.d., 2:19cv-46.
The brief argues that such a deadline is unconstitutional anyway, and in addition it violated due process for the 2019 session of the legislature to have changed that deadline from April to January, after the January deadline had passed.
If the lawsuit wins, the party’s nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Auditor, and Agriculture Commissioner will be on the November 2019 ballot. Kentucky elects all its statewide state officers in the odd years prior to presidential years. The party is ballot-qualified, and entitled to nominate by convention, because it polled over 2% for president in 2016.
On May 6, the Arizona Secretary of State posted new registration data on her website, as of April 1, 2019. See it here. The page makes it easy to compare the new data with the data from January 1, 2019. The two major parties have both increased their share of the registration during the last three months.
Although the Green Party is no longer ballot-qualified, Arizona treats parties that go off the ballot as though they were still ballot-qualified, for a year. Therefore the data includes the Green Party.
On May 4, the Minnesota Independence Party held a state convention and voted to affiliate with the Alliance Party, a nationally-organized party with centrist views. The Independence Party is not ballot-qualified in Minnesota, but the party is well-organized and was able to successfully petition for various statewide offices in 2016 and 2018. In 2016 its presidential nominee was Evan McMullin. Thanks to Philip Fuehrer for this news.
The California Senate passed SB 27 on May 2. This is the bill that requires presidential primary candidates to reveal their income tax returns from the preceding five years. The bill still has not yet been sent to the Assembly Elections Committee. Therefore, even after it is sent there, it cannot be heard in that committee until June 5 at the earliest.
Similar bills in other states have not yet passed in any state, and none of them has made any headway so far this month.
