Great Britain votes on Thursday, May 23, for its members of the European Parliament. See this Independent article, giving poll results. They show the Brexit Party has 34%, Labour 21%, Liberal Democratic 12%, Conservative 11%, Green 8%.
This election is conducted using proportional representation, with twelve districts.
The Houston Chronicle has this interesting article about House Bill 2504, which has passed the House and which both helps and harms minor parties.
It helps by lowering the vote test from 5% at the last election, to 2% at any of the last five elections. It hurts by imposing filing fees on the candidates nominated by minor party conventions. The story tends to present the bill as more favorable than unfavorable to minor parties.
The bill has not passed the State Senate yet, and time is running out for this year’s legislative session.
On May 1, the Nevada Secretary of State released new registration data. The state releases this data every month. See it here.
The Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified only because its registration is above 1% of the number of registered voters. In November 2018 it did not meet the alternate 1% vote test. The registration data released on May 1, 2019, shows that the registration requirement is currently 15,439, and the party has 15,486 members, so the party has a margin of 47.
Last month, following a voter registration purge, the party only had a margin of 7.
The party did not meet the alternate 1% vote test because its only two statewide candidates were for Governor and U.S. Senate. It got .91% for Governor and .96% for U.S. Senate. Both of those races were considered too close to call, although Democrats ending up winning both of them, and gaining a U.S. Senate seat. The Libertarian Party would easily have met the 2018 vote test if it had bothered to run candidates for the lesser statewide offices, such as Treasurer.
On May 10, state officials from Ohio and Michigan asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay recent decisions of 3-judge U.S. District Courts concerning redistricting. Both of the lower court recent decisions ordered the state in question to redraw U.S. House districts in time for the 2020 election.
The applications for a stay are: Michigan Senate v League of Women Voters of Michigan, 18A-1170; and Householder v Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute, 18A1165.
Both applications were addressed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who will surely refer each to all members of the Court.
South Africa held a parliamentary election on May 8, to fill the 400 seats in its national legislative body. Fourteen parties won at least one seat, under the country’s proportional representation system. However, the ruling party won a majority of 231 seats. See the wikipedia article about the election.
