The Minnesota legislature is about to adjourn for the year, as of Sunday, May 20. A bill to make petition deadlines earlier for newly-qualifying parties and independent candidates did not pass. The bill, HB 1393, moved the primary from August to June. Because Minnesota law ties the date of the primary to the petition deadlines for new parties and also independent candidates, the bill would automatically have made those deadlines two months earlier.

The Minnesota bills to forbid cities from using ranked choice voting for their own elections, HB 3690 and SF 3325, also failed to pass. The Senate bill had passed one committee but did not advance beyond that.

The bills to make the legislature non-partisan also failed to pass. They were HF 1843 and SF 3759.

“The Conversation” is an on-line publication, since 2011, with content from the academic and research community. It has published this article about multi-candidate elections, by Mathematics Professor Christoph Borgers of Tufts. It shows theoretical flaws in standard elections, elections using ranked choice voting, Condorcet, and Borda. If you aren’t sure what those last two systems are, the article is excellent for explaining them. Borgers then proposes a new system. Thanks to Craig Franklin for the link.

A few days ago, it became known that a Utah initiative to legalize medical marijuana had enough valid signatures. It is very difficult to get a statewide initiative on the Utah ballot. Then, opponents of the measure sued in state court to have it blocked from the ballot because of the content of the initiative. The lawsuit says Utah cannot legalize medical marijuana because of federal law. See this story. The case is Coalition for a Safe and Healthy Utah v Cox, 3rd judicial district.