On April 15, Jim Walden, the New York city mayoral candidate who wants “Independence” as his ballot label, filed this reply brief in Walder v Kosinski, 25-764.

In 2022 the New York legislature banned the words “Independence” and “independent” from ever being part of a qualified party’s name. Election officials therefore won’t even permit an independent candidate to use either of those words in his or her ballot label. New York is one of the 25 states that lets an independent candidate choose a party label that is not too long and not obscene. But this interpretation of the 2022 law means that a New York independent candidate can’t even have the word “independent” as a ballot label, which is absurd.

Oklahoma law lets parties choose whether to let independents vote in their primaries or not. On April 12, the Oklahoma Libertarian Party voted to allow independents in its 2026 primaries.

Oklahoma Libertarians did not allow independents to vote in their primaries of 2018, 2020, 2022, or 2024.

On April 14, some overseas North Carolina voters filed their own lawsuit to save their November 2024 ballots from being invalidated. Cooley v Hirsch, e.d., 5:25cv-193. They put out that they followed all the rules when they voted last year. The rules said they didn’t need to enclose a copy of their photo ID. Yet now the State Supreme Court is ordering them all to send such copies in a short time period, or have their votes discarded.

The new case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers, who already has the associated case filed by the State Board of Elections.