On February 1, a subcommittee of the Virginia House Privileges & Elections Committee defeated HB 1129 by 5-1. The bill would have imposed a top-two system on Virginia.
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Public Policy Polls released a new California poll on February 7, showing that two Democrats will likely be the only choices on the November 2018 ballot for both Governor and U.S. Senator. Voters who don’t wish to vote for a Democrat will be disenfranchised, as there is no write-in space any longer on California general election ballots for partisan office other than president.
Actress Diane Neal says she will run for U.S. House in New York’s 19th district as an independent candidate. See this story. The story appears to say she will petition as an independent candidate, instead of seeking the nomination of one of New York’s eight qualified parties. If she only appears on the ballot as an independent, New York’s confusing ballot format will injure her campaign. That format will put her name on a far corner of the ballot, so that most voters probably won’t even see her name.
She could probably easily obtain the nomination of the ballot-qualified Reform Party. In 2016 another independent candidate for U.S. House in New York, Martin Babinec, got the Reform Party nomination, and he polled 24,595 votes on the Reform line. He also petitioned as an independent and got an additional 10,043 votes on his independent line. Thanks to Austin Cassidy for the link.
Last week U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles ordered North Carolina to hold 2018 primaries for State Supreme Court and State Court of Appeals judges. This lawsuit was in response to a 2017 North Carolina law that eliminated such primaries, for 2018 only. North Carolina judicial elections are partisan. North Carolina Democratic Party v Berger. There are four statewide judicial races in 2018.
On February 7, the state filed this brief asking the Fourth Circuit to stay the U.S. District Court’s decision. Time is running short in this case because the primary is in May and the filing period for the primary is this month. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
This newspaper story from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, describes the second day of the trial in Libertarian Party of South Dakota v Krebs, the U.S. District Court lawsuit over minor party ballot access in South Dakota.
The story has a slight factual error toward the end. The petitions for members of qualified minor parties to get themselves on the primary ballot is due March 29, not May 29.
Here is a story (published a day earlier) in the same newspaper, the Argus Leader, describing the first day of the trial.