According to this story, a poll of the Alabama Republican primary for this year’s special U.S. Senate election shows Roy Moore leading. However, Alabama election law provides for runoff primaries, even in special elections. The primary is August 15. The runoff is September 26. The poll results are: Roy Moore 31%; incumbent U.S. Senator Luther Strange 23%; Congressman Mo Brooks 21%; no one else has as much as 5%.

The election is December 12, 2017. Due to Alabama’s very restrictive ballot access laws, it is not likely that anyone will be on that ballot except the Republican and Democratic nominees.

George Skelton, veteran politics reporter for the Los Angeles Times, here bemoans the fact that young people, especially Hispanics and blacks, have far lower turnout rates nowadays in midterm years than in the past. Skelton has been vociferously in favor of the top-two system in California, ever since it was first proposed in 2004.

He does not mention the idea that top-two is one reason why California midterm elections are so boring. In 2014, two very interesting gubernatorial candidates filed, but were kept off the general election ballot because of the top-two system. One was Green Party member Luis Rodriguez, who had gone from being a gang member and drug addict, to one of California’s most celebrated contemporary writers. During 2014 he was poet laurate of Los Angeles. He has published 15 books and won many literary and civic awards.

The other was Cindy Sheehan, famous for having set up “Camp Casey” outside President George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas, summer white house. She also filed, as a Peace & Freedom Party member, but like Rodriguez, was kept out of the general election campaign season.

Mike Becallo, an elected town councilor in Cicero, New York, has changed his registration from Republican to Libertarian. See this story. The office is partisan. Cicero has a population of 31,632 and is in Onondaga County, the same county as Syracuse.