The Mayor of Kingston, New York, Shayne Gallo, is a Democrat, and he was defeated for re-nomination in the Democratic Party primary held on September 10. But he was also a candidate in the Green Party primary. Election officials will soon reveal whether he got enough write-ins in the Green Party primary to be on the November ballot as the Green nominee. See this story. UPDATE: the Green Party write-ins have now been tallied and Shayne Gallo lost the Green Party primary also. His Democratic opponent, Steve Noble, won the Green primary. See this story.

On Thursday, September 10, Illinois held a special U.S. House election to fill the vacancy in the 18th district. According to this news story, Darin LaHood, the Republican nominee, received 34,907 votes; Robert Mellon, the Democratic nominee, received 15,840 votes. That totals only 50,747 votes, although when the results are official, they will probably be slightly higher.

The last time Illinois held a special U.S. House election, on April 9, 2013, to fill the vacant 2nd district seat, there were six candidates on the ballot: one Democrat, one Republican, one Green, and three independents. The turnout in that election was 83,193 votes cast, significantly better than the September 2015 race. The reason there were alternate candidates on the ballot in 2013 is that a U.S. District Court Judge had struck down the 5% petition requirement for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties, as applied to special elections. That case was Jones v McGuffage, a Green Party ballot access victory. Despite the 2013 court victory, Illinois election officials continued to require 5% petitions in the September 2015 race, and no one went to court in 2015 to change that.

On September 10, the California legislature passed AB 477. It sets up internal operating rules for the Green Party. The Green Party has been using the Peace & Freedom internal rules ever since the Green Party qualified in 1992, because until now, the California election code only had internal rules for the four oldest parties (Republican, Democratic, American Independent, and Peace & Freedom). The election code has said that other parties should just choose one of those four. But now there are five parties with their own internal rules in the law (or there will be as soon as Governor Brown signs the bill).

This bill gives the Green Party the authority to designs its own districts for electing party officers. Each district would elect members to the “county council”, but the districts could actually be portions of counties. Here is the text of AB 477. The bill has another part that has nothing to do with the Green Party. The other part of the bill deals with voters who forgot to sign the outer envelope of their mailed ballot when they returned it to the election office. The bill gives them a chance to correct the error within eight days.