On November 13, a U.S. District Court heard the case against using ranked-choice voting in a Maine congressional election. The judge said he will rule on Thursday, November 15. See this story. In the meantime, Maine is proceeding to count votes.
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The Tenth Circuit will hear Baca v Williams, 18-1173, on January 24, 2019, at 8:30 a.m., in Denver. This is the Colorado “disobedient” presidential elector case.
On November 7, the Eighth Circuit refused to rehear Abdurrahman v Dayton, 16-4551. The rehearing request had been pending for two months. This is the case filed by a 2016 Democratic presidential elector from Minnesota who had refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. The state had then replaced him as a presidential elector. The Eighth Circuit original decision had said that the case is moot.
The Utah Republican Party is currently asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case over how parties nominate. The state government notified the court on November 13 that it will not bother to file a response.
The Republican Party has the support of many amici briefs from many organizations. A later blog post will list them. The U.S. Supreme Court web page has yet to be updated, so that the full list is not yet known.
The issue in the case is whether the First Amendment’s freedom of association clause protects the ability of a party to decide for itself how to nominate candidates.
If the Court is interested in the case, it will probably ask the Utah government to file a response.
On November 13, the Prohibition Party nominated its national ticket for 2020, via a telephone conference call. Bill Bayes of Mississippi is the presidential nominee. Connie Gammon of Tennessee is the vice-presidential nominee.
An earlier version of this post said Bayes is the first presidential nominee from Mississippi, but the Constitution Party of Texas in 1960, and the Reform Party in 2008, also had presidential nominees who lived in Mississippi. Thanks to the commenters for pointing this out, especial Rick Knox.