On December 21, 2018, a Wisconsin state trial court issued an opinion in Election Systems & Software v Wisconsin Elections Commission, Dane Co., 18-cv-972. The issue was what the Wisconsin Elections Commission should have agreed to, relative to Jill Stein’s request to examine the ES&S software used to count votes in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is one of the three states in which Stein had requested a recount of the November 2016 presidential vote.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission prepared a contract with the Stein campaign, letting the campaign’s experts examine the software, if they promised not to disclose it. That contract was prepared in March 2018. Then ES&S sued to force the Elections Commission to revise the contract, so that it prohibited Stein’s experts from criticizing the software. But the Court said the Elections Commission is under no obligation to do that.

The court made this analogy: “A nutritionist might be given access to the secret formula for Coca Cola, which is undeniably proprietary information and a trade secret. It would not be an unauthorized use or a disclosure of the trade secret for the nutritionist to say, “After seeing the secret formula, I can tell you that Coca Cola is unhealthy.”

The New York legislature will take up various election law reforms on January 14, Monday, according to this story. So far the bills have not been placed on the legislature’s web page.

The New York Independence Party has been ballot-qualified starting in November 1994. Its share of the vote for its nominees (in the districts in which it had nominees) was the lowest in 2018 since the 1990’s.

For U.S. House, its nominees polled 1.47% of the vote (in the districts that it contested), the lowest in history.

For State Senate, its nominees polled 3.39%, the lowest since 1998. The 1998 percentage was 2.93%.

For Assembly, the 2018 percentage was 2.98%, the lowest since it has been a qualified party.

For the office at the top of the ballot (President in presidential years, and Governor in gubernatorial years), its 2018 percentage was 1.13%, the lowest in its history, except 2000, when it nominated John Hagelin for President and he only polled .36%. Hagelin was also the Natural Law Party nominee that year.

In general, all of the New York minor parties that mostly nominate Democratic and Republican nominees as their own nominees, did poorly in 2018. Perhaps New York voters are getting weary of the “fusion” parties.