This animated feature film is from the Maine Secretary of State’s web page. It attempts to explain the system to people who aren’t already familiar with it.
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On May 7, the city council of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, voted to use ranked choice voting for the city’s elections, starting in 2019. St. Louis Park has a population of 45,000 and is near Minneapolis.
Jennie Stultz, a former Mayor of Gastonia, North Carolina, tried to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for State House this year, but she was unable to obtain the required signatures. The law required her to get 4% of the number of registered voters in her district, which was about 2,300 signatures. See this story.
Gastonia has a population of approximately 76,000.
When the legislature eased the ballot access laws last year, it eased them for newly-qualifying parties, and independent candidates for statewide office and U.S. House. But it did not ease them for independent candidates for the legislature. Only Georgia has such a difficult petition requirement for independent candidates for the legislature, and Illinois is almost as stringent.
On May 17, Kent Bernbeck, a Nebraska political activist who has long worked to ease restrictions on initiatives, said he will be an independent candidate for Treasurer this year and that he will soon file a federal lawsuit to overturn the law (passed in 2016) that requires him to collect 10% of the registered voters, in order to get on the ballot. See this story.
The veteran Los Angeles Times reporter for California state governmnent, George Skelton, has this column. The last sentence is, “Depending on what happens this November, maybe we should consider reforming the system.” This is very significant, because Skelton has been a steadfast and even vociferous supporter of the top-two system ever since it was on the ballot the first time in California, in 2004 (it was defeated that year).
Also, Marty Wilson, spokesperson for the California Chamber of Commerce, is quoted in the piece as suggesting the top-two system should be changed so that it only affects district office, not statewide office. This is also significant. The Chamber of Commerce and the California Business Roundtable some years ago formed a committee to defend the top-two system. That committee has intervened in court in every California lawsuit over any aspect of the top-two system. They even intervened in the pending ACLU lawsuit over party labels for candidates who are registered in unqualified parties, Soltysik v Padilla. That case will get a Ninth Circuit opinion any day now, although it may take time.