On September 28, Georgia filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of its law that Public Service Commissioners are elected in at-large partisan elections.  Rose v Raffensperger, 23-1060.

The court fight over whether the elections should be at-large or by district has resulted in eliminating any election for that office in November 2024.  That has implications for ballot access.  A qualified minor party stays on the ballot in Georgia by polling 1% of the number of registered voters for any statewide office.  With no Public Service Commisioner in November 2024, the only statewide office will be President.  The Libertarian Party, the only ballot-qualified third party in Georgia, generally doesn’t meet the Georgia vote test for President.  It only did so once, in 2016.  But usually that doesn’t matter because the party always easily meets the vote test for Public Service Commissioner and for U.S. Senate, the only two other statewide offices up in presidential years.  By bad luck, there is no U.S. Senate election in Georgia in 2024, so the party will lose its qualified status if it doesn’t meet the vote test for President.

That qualified status only applies to statewide office.  It doesn’t apply to district and county office, so even though the Libertarian Party is qualified in Georgia now, it is only qualified for statewide office.  That is why neither it, nor any other third party, has ever appeared on the ballot in a regularly-scheduled U.S. House election.  Special elections for U.S. House don’t require any petitions so there have been minor party candidates in special U.S. House elections in Georgia.

The U.S. Supreme Court will probably decide during June whether to hear Rose v Raffensperger.  If the Court refuses to hear it, then the state will have won the lawsuit and someone at that point might sue the state to force it to hold a statewide Public Service Commissioner election in November 2024.  However there would be no clear solution as to how the Democratic and Republican Parties would nominate for that office, because the primary was held on May 21.

On March 16, the Approval Voting Party, which is ballot-qualified in Colorado, nominated Blake Huber for president.  His running mate is Andrea Denault.

Huber was also the party’s presidential nominee in 2020.  That year he got 355 votes in Colorado, the only state in which he was on the ballot.  In 2016 the party ran Frank Atwood fpr president.  He was only on the ballot in Colorado, and he got 337 votes.