On May 17, a Montana state trial court took testimony in the lawsuit on whether the Green Party had enough valid signatures on its March 2018 petition. See this story. The trial has not finished and will start again on May 24.
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On May 17, attorneys for Maine filed this 24-page brief in Maine Republican Party v Dunlap, 1:18cv-179. The lawsuit had been filed earlier this month by the Republican Party, which argued that its freedom of association rights means that the party ought to be free to avoid using ranked choice voting.
The Maine government brief notes that the Republican Party uses a form of ranked choice voting at state conventions, to choose party officers. See page 10. The government brief also has a scholarly footnote 7, mentioning instances from approximately 100 years ago when states required parties to use ranked choice voting in their primaries.
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.
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.