On March 15, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed HB 4977. It changes Lieutenant Governor elections. Old law provided for a separate election for that office. The new law says Governor and Lieutenant Governor are elected as a team in the general election. There will be no more primaries for Lieutenant Governor; gubernatorial nominees choose their own running mate.
The newly-appointed members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections are being sworn in on Wednesday, March 21. Then the new board members will have their first meeting. It is presumed that they will confirm that the Green Party is now a ballot-qualified party.
HF 3690 has been introduced in the Minnesota legislature to eliminate the ability of Minnesota cities to use ranked choice voting in elections for their own officers. See this story.
On the afternoon of Monday, March 19, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Republican legislative leaders’ request for a stay on using the new districts. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
Political scientist Seth Masket in this article defends closed primaries. The article is unusually useful because he was already in an on-line twitter debate, so he includes the points raised by opponents of closed primaries, and then he reacts to each one.
