David Daley and Rob Richie have this article in Real Clear Politics, explaining that several state Democratic Parties will use caucuses that use ranked choice voting in 2020. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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The Arkansas Libertarian Party has between 2,000 and 3,000 signatures on its party petition so far. Thanks to Paul Frankel for this news.
The Nation, venerable weekly magazine published in New York, regularly carries a column by Eric Alterman. The April 15 column mentions that Bernie Sanders was a presidential elector candidate for the Socialist Workers Party in 1980, in Vermont. Although this had not been a complete secret, it is rare that this fact has been mentioned in a publication with wide readership. The general thrust of the column is that voters who want the Democratic Party to win the presidential election of 2020 should not support making Sanders the Democratic nominee. Alterman describes the Socialist Workers Party in 1980 as “Trotskyist” and says in 1980 “it favored the abolition of the U.S. military budget and proclaimed itself in solidarity with both Cuba and Iran at a time when the latter held over 52 Americans hostage.”
On April 11, Central Jersey Progressive Democrats filed a lawsuit in state court to overturn a state law that requires that county organizations of qualified parties have an equal number of male and female committee members. The lawsuit is filed in Superior Court in Middlesex County. The law has existed since 1947, but is not enforced in all counties. See this story.
On April 8, the Democratic Party filed this brief in Jacobson v Ertel, n.d., 4:18cv-262. This is the case over the Florida law that says the party that won the most recent gubernatorial election will always have the top line on the ballot for its nominees for all offices. The Democratic Party has not elected the Governor of Florida since 1994, and it hopes to win this case so that in future general elections, a random procedure will decide which candidates will be listed first.
The state government filed its brief on April 8 as well. It says that rotating the names of candidates in any particular election would be too complicated, but it says nothing about the alternate idea of having a random drawing each election to decide ballot order. The state also says that the Democratic Party has never before filed a lawsuit against any other state on this issue, and notes that in certain other states with the same type of law, the Democratic Party benefits. And the state claims that this law has existed since 1970 and the statute of limitations means that if the party didn’t like the law, it should have filed its lawsuit before 1975. And the state belittles the idea that ballot position makes any difference.