Lee Busby, a former Marine Colonel, and a former aide to current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, says he is a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate in the Alabama December 12 election. See this story.
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Late last year, Professor Michael Kang, who is both a political scientist and a law professor, wrote “Gerrymandering and the Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship.” The paper argues that no election law that is based on a desire to help one particular political party can be constitutional. That paper has just won the prize for the year’s best election law paper. The award was made by the Association of American Law Schools, Election Law Section.
The paper is 71 pages long and can be read here. Professsor Kang has been writing for some years in favor of equal and tolerant ballot access, and he is also a foe of “sore loser” laws. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Even though the Maine Green Party has been one of the strongest state units of the Green Party for many years, the party has never had a nominee for either branch of Congress. On November 24, Henry John Bear, one of the two Green state legislators, announced his candidacy for the 2nd district in 2018. See this story.
If the petition currently circulating for ranked choice voting succeeds, and if the voters again vote in favor of that system in June 2018, then Maine will use ranked choice voting for congressional elections in 2018.
On November 25, the Board of Californians for Electoral Reform endorsed Thomas Palzer’s initiative to repeal the California top-two system, and to return to the old semi-closed primary.
Gary Johnson and Jill Stein still plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, their case using federal anti-trust law to attack the exclusionary policy of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Their cert petition was originally due at the end of November, but the Court has granted an extension to file. The cert petition is now due December 27.