The British Columbia elections office said on December 11 that the votes in the referendum on proportional representation will have been counted by Christmas day.
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On December 13, the North Dakota Republican state committee rejected the idea that the party should endorse a closed primary for itself.
Gary Johnson was the Libertarian nominee for U.S. Senate from New Mexico this year, and he polled 15.38%. It is clear that the Johnson Senate campaign also boosted the vote totals for other New Mexico Libertarian candidates in 2018. The party polled 4.98% for U.S. House in the New Mexico districts that it contested. That was the best showing in the nation for Libertarians for U.S. House, except that in Utah, the lone Libertarian for U.S. House polled 5.00%.
New Mexico Libertarians had not even run for U.S. House since 1996, when the single nominee polled 2.21%, so 2018 was quite a change for New Mexico Libertarian involvement in U.S. House elections.
Also, the New Mexico Libertarian Party had three nominees for statewide state executive positions. It polled 5.00% for Secretary of State, 4.76% for Attorney General, an 5.77% for Land Commissioner. Again, these were the best showings for Libertarians for statewide state offices anywhere in the nation in 2018, except that in Montana the Libertarian nominee for Clerk of the State Supreme Court received 5.99%. Also, for purposes of this blog post, all Libertarians running in races with only one major party opponent are excluded. Without that exclusion, the best Libertarian state for U.S. House would have been Washington, where a Libertarian running against a Democrat, and no other opponents, received 28.71%.
The Kansas Green Party’s Facebook page says the party will attempt to collect 21,112 valid signatures to become a qualified party. This represents 2% of the last gubernatorial vote. The law requires that the petition be completed within six months. The party is planning the drive to start April 6, 2019. The Green Party has tried this petition twice before, but always runs out of time. No party has successfully petitioned in Kansas (except Americans Elect) since 1998, when the U.S. Taxpayers Party (later known as the Constitution Party) did this petition.
SAM (Serve America Movement) is a new political party that recently won qualified status for itself in New York. Its platform no longer includes any endorsement of a top-two system. Here is the new platform language concerning ballot access.
Previously, the party’s platform on ballot access endorsed top-two systems. The old platform said, “We believe that states themselves should sponsor non-partisan primary elections, in which all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same primary ballot. This could either be a top-two primary system, as in California and Washington state, or a top-four primary, as suggested by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter in their review of the American political system earlier this year.”