On June 2, the Nevada Senate passed AB 597, which lets independent voters vote in partisan primaries.
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On June 2, Kshama Sawant announced that she will run for U.S. House in Washington’s Ninth district in 2026. She was an elected member of the Seattle city council from 2014 to 2024. Although Seattle city elections are non-partisan, she was a member of Socialist Alternative while she was on the council. She is now a member of Revolutionary Workers.
The Ninth District is the most overwhelmingly Democratic U.S. House district in Washington. In 2024, only two candidates, both Democrats, ran for the seat. Congressmember Adam Smith is the incumbent. Thanks to Joshua Fauver for this news.
On June 2, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed HF 954, an omnibus election law bill. It moves the petition deadline for independent presidential candidates, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, from August to June. Also it changes the definition of a qualified party from a group that polled 2% for the office at the top of the ticket (president/governor) at the last election, to one that polled 2% at each of the last three elections.
No state has ever before required a group to meet the vote test three elections in a row. That would mean that if by some oddity either the Democratic or Republican Party ever failed to poll 2% for Governor or President, it couldn’t get its qualified status back for six years. In Williams v Rhodes, in 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the constitution does not permit a state to discriminate against new parties, relative to old parties, so a case could be made that the new law is unconstitutional.
The bill moves the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, from March to June. However, that was only done because in 2018, the old March petition deadlines had been held unconstitutional, and were not being enforced.
The bill also bans ranked choice voting, and adds a sore loser law to the election code. The bill had passed the House by 65-31, and the Senate by 32-15.
On June 2, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it had postponed deciding on whether to hear Republican National Committee v Genser, 24-786. The Court will consider it again at its June 5 conference. This is the case in which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had ruled that if a voter forgets to list the date on the outer envelope (so that the ballot is invalid), that same party may then vote provisionally.
The Republican Party argues in the U.S. Supreme Court that state courts should not be allowed to rule on election lawsuits involving congressional elections.
On May 31, Nevada AB 534 passed the Assembly by 25-15. On June 1, a Sunday, it passed the Senate Committee on Legislative Operations & Elections. It lets independent voters vote in partisan primaries.