On June 5, Montana holds partisan primaries. Technically all qualified parties in Montana nominate by primary, but the state has almost never before printed up any primary ballots for parties other than Republican or Democratic. Generally minor parties don’t have contested primaries, and Montana doesn’t print primary ballots for parties with no contests.

However, this year the Green Party has two candidates running against each other for U.S. Senate, so there will be Green Party primary ballots. See this story.

On March 20, the New York village of South Glens Falls held a special election to fill a vacancy on the Village Board. Green Party nominee Christine Elms won the election, which was a partisan election. Although she was the only person whose name was on the ballot, she had two write-in opponents. One of her opponents was a former Mayor of South Glens Falls. Thanks to William Stevenson for this information.

Citizens in Charge has filed this amicus curiae brief in Independent Party v Padilla, 17-1200. The issue in the case is whether the California Secretary of State violated the rights of the voters who formed the Independent Party, when he refused to instruct county election officials to tally up how many registered voters the Independent Party has. If that party has approximately 62,000 registered voters, then it should be recognized as a qualified party.

The amicus is very short and demonstrates that it has been very common for states to allow two parties to be on the ballot, even though both shared a common word in their name. The California Secretary of State had said there cannot be a party named “Independent Party” because the American Independent Party is on the ballot.