On October 23, the Commission on Presidential Debates filed this amicus curiae brief in defense of its current policy on whom it invites into the presidential debates. This is in the lawsuit called Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, which is pending in U.S. District Court.
A U.S. District Court in Arkansas will hold a trial in Moore v Martin, e.d. 4:14cv-65, on December 12, 2017. The issue is whether the state really needs a March petition deadline for non-presidential independents in order to have enough time to check the signatures.
A Quinnipiac Poll was released on October 30 for the Virginia gubernatorial election next week. It has an interesting breakdown of the vote by various groups of voters. It shows that 6% of independents support Cliff Hyra, the Libertarian nominee. But it shows that fewer than 1% of Democrats, and fewer than 1% of Republicans, support Hyra. Thanks to Political Wire for the link.
The new North Carolina ballot access law for parties says a party is on the ballot if its presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 35 states in the last presidential election. The State Board of Elections is now working on a procedure on how a party should document this. The State Board has already been in touch with the North Carolina Green Party about this. The new provision has no impact just now on any other third party, but Greens can use this provision because Jill Stein was on the ballot in November 2016 in 44 states.
The new law has no impact on the Libertarian Party at this time, because the party was already on the ballot under the alternative provision that keeps parties on the ballot if they got at least 2% for either president or governor. In November 2016 the Libertarian Party got 2.77% for President and 2.19% for Governor.
Japan uses proportional representation. On October 22, it held an election for House of Representatives, to fill 465 seats. Seven parties won seats; also 22 independents were elected. See the wikipedia page about the election.
