Two of the candidates on the California June 2018 primary ballot are registered members of the Socialist Equality Party. They are David Moore, candidate for U.S. Senate; and Kevin Mitchell, for U.S. House, 51st district.
Under California election laws now being challenged in court, they must have “party preference: none” on the ballot.
On May 4, the Maine Republican Party amended its bylaws to say that the party chooses to nominate by old-fashioned plurality primary elections. The same day, it filed a federal lawsuit, saying it has a freedom of association right to nominate according to its own desires, and that it desires not to use ranked-choice voting. Maine Republican Party v Dunlap, 1:18cv-179.
If this lawsuit were to win, then logically the Maine Green Party and the Maine Libertarian Party could also insist that they prefer to nominate by convention. Letting small qualified parties nominate by convention would be a huge advantage to those parties. Under current law, the primary petitions are so difficult, neither party is able to run more than a handful of candidates. This year, there are only about six Maine Greens running for a partisan office (all for legislature), and only one Libertarian (also legislature).
The case is assigned to Judge Jon David Levy, an Obama appointee. The Republican Party will face a severe problem getting injunctive relief, because the lawsuit and the bylaws change were made so close to the June 12 primary. But eventually the party might win declaratory relief. Even if the party did obtain injunctive relief, ranked choice voting would still go ahead for the other three qualified parties, Democratic, Green, and Libertarian.
There are no Republicans on the District of Columbia 2018 primary ballot for districtwide partisan office. However, the District’s election law and the Republican Party rules permit the party to nominate candidates for such offices after the primary is over, via party meeting. Therefore it is very likely that Republicans will appear on the November 2018 ballot for D.C. partisan districtwide office. An earlier post suggested that the Republican Party might not have any nominees on the November ballot, but that was almost certainly mistaken. Thanks to Pat McConnell for this news.
The Hawaii legislature adjourned on May 3. The bills to remove the petition blank for signers to add part of their Social Security number failed to pass. The Senate had passed SB 462 last year, with no opposition. But the House never took it up. There was a House bill, HB 294, to do the same thing, but it never moved.
This Gotham Gazette article on the 2018 New York gubernatorial race discusses each of the state’s ballot-qualified minor parties.
