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.
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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.
New Jersey does not permit out-of-state circulators for primary petitions. The Third Circuit will hear a challenge to that law on January 23, 2018, Wilmuth v Guadagno, 17-1925. The plaintiff filed the case in 2016, wanting to circulate primary petitions for a Democratic presidential candidate. The state argued that if someone from outside New Jersey were allowed to do that, that would violate the associational rights of the Democratic Party. However, the Democratic Party has no bylaw on that subject, and did not intervene in the case. Nevertheless, the U.S. District Court ruled against Wilmuth, without even writing an opinion, back on March 24, 2017. Wilmuth is appealing to the Third Circuit.
Socialist Alternative entered a candidate in the November 7, 2017 elections for Minneapolis city council, ward 3. That candidate, Ginger Jentzen, placed first among the first choice ballots. Minneapolis uses ranked-choice voting. Jentzen did not win a majority when the first place votes were counted, so the city then counted the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place ballots. When those votes were counted, Jentzen had lost to a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but even in the final tally she had over 40% of the vote.
See the wikipedia article for the 2017 Minneapolis city elections. Scroll down to ward 3. One of the four candidates in the race was a Green, Samantha Pree-Stinson. The Pree-Stinson campaign did not ask voters to cast their 2nd choice votes for Jentzen.
Minneapolis elections allow party labels on the ballot, but parties don’t have nominees. There was no one in the race with the label “Republican”; there were two candidates with the label “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.”
Chanda Mills Crutcher, a pastor, has entered the December 12 Alabama U.S. Senate race. She is the first woman in the race. See this press release.