The Nevada Secretary of State recently agreed to tally the number of registered voters in unqualified parties that have filed paperwork with their bylaws and officers. Never before had Nevada kept a tally of a party that had never qualified to be on the ballot. The Forward Party tally currently is 80 registered voters.
On February 25, U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney postponed the status conference in the California top-two lawsuit from February 27 to April 10. Peace & Freedom Party v Weber, n.d., 3:24cv-8308.
On February 25, the Virginia House passed SB 322 by 62-36. This is the National Popular Vote Plan bill. Assuming the Governor signs it, Virginia will be the first state that has passed the plan since Minnesota did so in 2023.
On February 25, the Los Angeles Times published a letter to the editor from John Galisky, advocating that California Democrats act to replace the top-two primary with a top-five system that combines ranked choice voting. The same section of that day’s newspaper also has two other letters, advocating that some Democratic candidates for Governor drop out of the race.
On February 25, defenders of South Dakota’s initiative process filed this reply brief in Dakotans for Health v Johnson, 25-2940. The issue is the petition deadline for initiatives, nine months before the general election. The deadline had been six months until the 2025 session of the legislature changed it to nine months. The U.S. District Court had struck down the nine-month deadline.
The brief is quite fierce, and says the state’s rationale, that the deadline is needed to allow time for litigation over the validity of the proposed initiative, is phony. The brief also outlines all the hostility the legislature has shown to the initiative process recently.
