British Columbia voters will decide whether to use a new voting system sometime before the end of November 2018. The exact question is still not prepared, but already debates are being held. See this story.
North Carolina has registration by party, but the state never tallies the number of voters registered into unqualified parties. Because the Green Party became a qualified party earlier this year, the state is now reporting Green registration data. The State Board of Elections provides a new tally every week. Green Party registration was below 100 during April and mid-May, but the May 26 tally is 171. See the entire tally here. Thanks to Michael for this news.
Michael Feinstein has this op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, advocating proportional representation for California.
California permits write-ins in the June primary for all office. Every election year, there are a few legislative races in which only one person filed to be on the primary ballot. So then anyone who files as a write-in is guaranteed to place second, assuming the write-in candidate is the only declared write-in candidate.
For the 2018 primary, there are three Assembly districts in which Libertarians filed as write-ins, and there is only one candidate on the primary ballot, so the three Libertarians will place second and be on the November ballot. They are Justin Quigley in the 21st district (running against incumbent Adam Gray); Christopher Stare in the 51st district (running against incumbent Wendy Carrillo); and Autumn Browne in the 69th district (running against incumbent Tom Daly). Here is the entire list of declared write-in candidates for all federal and state office in the 2018 primary.
As already reported, on May 18 a U.S. District Court struck down New York state’s ban on out-of-state petitioners. The state has filed a request with the court that the ban remain in place until November 2018. That, of course, would make it more difficult for the nominees of unqualified parties to get on the ballot this year. The petitioning period for general election petitioning does not begin until July 2018. The plaintiff Libertarian Party has asked the court to let the decision goes into effect immediately.