On August 19, U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi issued an order in Kim v Hanlon, the case over New Jersey ballot format in primary elections. The judge wants each side to submit a brief on whether or not the case should be dismissed on standing grounds. The order says none of the plaintiffs have alleged that they expect to run for office in future elections.

The judge had enjoined New Jersey’s ballot format last year, but so far there has still been no resolution on whether the ballot format is unconstitutional. The legislature has already modified the old ballot format law.

The lead plaintiff, Senator Andy Kim, probably expects to run for re-election in 2030, when is term is up, so presumably his brief will say that.

In 2016, Marco Rubio was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. His ballot status in the Arkansas Republican presidential primary was challenged by another candidate, David Librace, on the grounds that Rubio’s parents were never citizens of the United States, and therefore Rubio was not a “natural born citizen.” The case was Librace v Martin, e.d., 4:16cv-57.

The decision said that Librace did not have standing, and did not discuss the bigger issues in the case.

Rubio’s attorney, Jason Torchinsky, filed a brief in the case that argues that all persons born in the U.S., except for the children of foreign diplomats and the children of an invading army, are automatically citizens. This stance contradicts President Trump’s position on the matter. Currently Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State.

Here are the election results for the August 18 by-election in Alberta, Canada. Because 214 candidates qualified, the elections office decided to print blank ballots, so that all votes were write-in votes. Each polling place had a list of all the qualified candidates.

Only seventeen candidates got as many as ten votes.

The reason there were so many candidates is that a group deliberately recruited as many candidates as possible, to protest the failure of the Canadian government to switch to some form of proportional representation, after decades of agitation. Canadian House of Commons candidates need 100 signatures, plus a filing fee of $1,000.

Here is a picture of the write-in ballot.