Congressman Don Beyer has this op-ed in the Washington Post, explaining his bill for Fair Representation. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
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The Virginia State Board of Elections says the petition for Cliff Hyra, Libertarian nominee for Governor, is valid. He will be the only choice on the November 2017 ballot other than the Republican and Democratic nominees. Thanks to Bill Redpath for this news.
The other statewide minor party petition that is being validated now is the Arkansas Libertarian petition for 2018. The state will have finished checking that petition in early July.
On June 22, California bill SB 96 was sent to Governor Jerry Brown. It makes recall petitioning more difficult, by letting signers remove their names after the petition has been completed. It takes effect immediately, and would impact a recall drive that is currently proceeding against a California Democratic State Senator.
On June 27, the Maine Senate voted 21-13 to repeal ranked choice votin. That bill is LD 1625. One difficulty for supporters of ranked choice voting is that the Maine Secretary of State, a Democrat, opposes ranked choice voting.
A few hours later, also on June 27, the House voted 78-58 to pass LD 1624, which says that Ranked Choice Voting would survive for primaries, and for general elections for Congress.
On June 27, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party held a press conference with Representative Brandon Phinney, who said he had switched his registration from Republican to Libertarian. He is the third legislator to join the New Hampshire Libertarian Party this year. He is 29 years old, lives in Rochester, and was elected for the first time in 2016. His State Representative district, the Strafford County 24th district, elects only a single legislator (many New Hampshire representatives are elected from multi-member districts).