On February 5, the Alabama House passed HB 67, which lowers the cost of the list of registered voters from approximately $38,000, to exactly $1,000. The vote was 85-16. All of the “No” votes were cast by Democrats, although some Democrats voted for the bill.

On February 10, the Senate County & Municipal Committee passed the bill.

The Libertarian Party some years ago had filed a lawsuit against the law that required unqualified parties to pay the full $38,000. But the lawsuit lost, even though the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970 had summarily affirmed a decision of a 3-judge court in New York that if the government gives a free list to the qualified parties, it must give the list free to unqualified parties that were petitioning. Having the list is valuable if a party wants to check validity of a petition that it is about to submit. The Alabama existing law gives a free list of the voters to qualified parties.

Signal, an on-line news source in northeast Ohio, has this comprehensive story about the 2026 Libertarian Party primary.

On February 23, a 3-judge U.S. District Court in Utah declined to stop the U.S. House redistricting plan that had been imposed by a state court. Two of the plaintiffs are Republican members of the U.S. House, Celeste Maloy and Burgess Owens. Gardner v Henderson, 2:26cv-84. Here is the decision.

The plaintiffs had argued that Article One of the U.S. Constitution does not permit any government body except the legislature to write election laws for congressional elections. The Court did not agree that that theory fits this case, and furthermore said the federal case had been filed too close to the Utah primary. It agreed that the plaintiffs do have standing. The decision is unsigned. The three judges are Tenth Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich, a Bush Jr. appointee; Holly Teeter, a Trump appointee; and Robert J. Shelby, an Obama appointee.

Judge Tymkovich wrote separately to say he does not think the case was filed too late. But he agreed that Article One does not bar the state court from having acted, because, as he said, the state court’s authority derived from the state legislature’s pre-existing laws.