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.
Here is the story, hot off of Oklahoma Watch.
Thanks to Chris Powell for keeping us in the know!
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.
On April 7, President Donald Trump filed this brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in State of New Jersey v Trump, 24A886.
California Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-Coronado) has introduced AB 930. Among other things, it would require some write-in candidates to pay a filing fee if they want their write-ins in the primary counted. However, in 1974, the California State Supreme Court ruled in two decisions that it is unconstitutional to charge filing fees for write-in candidates. Donovan v Brown, 11 Cal 3d 571; and Knoll v Davidson, 12 Cal 3d 335.
The reason is that the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1974 that filing fees are unconstitutional unless they are needed to keep ballots from being crowded. And write-in candidates do not contribute to ballot clutter. Other courts that have made similar rulings are the Fourth Circuit (invalidating Maryland’s filing fees for write-in candidates in 1989) and a U.S. District Court in West Virginia in 2000.
