According to this story, the dispute over the identity of the winner of the Democratic primary for Alaska’s state house district 40 won’t be settled until early October. The primary was August 15. The two-person contest was very close and a court is holding a trial to determine the winner.
The Utah Debate Commission is composed of news organizations and the state’s public and private universities. It is chaired by the head of the Utah Republican Party and the Utah Democratic Party. Here is information about the Commission, which is obviously modeled on the Presidential Debate Commission.
It scheduled a televised debate for the evening of Wednesday, September 21, at Dixie State University, for the Democratic and Republican candidates for Attorney General, Jon Harper and Sean Reyes. Libertarian nominee W. Andrew McCullough, who was at 5% in the polls, was deemed not to meet the requirement to be invited, but McCullough was in the audience before the event started.
The event organizers were very surprised to hear that the Democratic nominee would not be appearing because he had decided to drop out of the race, for health reasons. But even though McCullough was present, the Commission still refused to allow him on the stage. Instead, they let the Republican nominee consume the entire time for the event. One-person debates sponsored by corporations are illegal campaign contributions, at least for federal office, although this event concerned a state office. See this story.
As noted earlier, on August 26, the Maryland State Board of Elections conceded that a 2015 law requiring independent candidates to file a declaration of candidacy in February is unconstitutional. The concession had come after an independent candidate for Baltimore city council, Dan Sparaco, had sued to overturn the requirement. That case was Sparaco v Lamone, 1:16cv-1579.
However, on August 25, two other candidates for Baltimore city council in the same district had sued the State Board of Elections to protest the Board’s concession in the Sparaco lawsuit. That new lawsuit was Schlakman v Maryland State Board of Elections, 1:16cv-2968.
But, on September 20, the Judge who was handling both cases dismissed the Schlakman lawsuit, so that the good precedent established by the Sparaco lawsuit will stand.
According to this story, just one county in Montana, Lewis & Clark, will reprint 56,000 ballots because the Libertarian Party nominee for U.S. House died last week and the party was permitted to replace him with a new nominee. Lewis & Clark is one of Montana’s more populated counties, and includes the state capitol, Helena. The story does not say how many other counties must reprint ballots.
Bloomberg has this essay by Leonid Bershidsky, about why two political parties aren’t enough for the United States. Bershidsky suggests that for the United States, a transition to using Instant Runoff Voting is more likely than that the U.S. would switch to proportional representation.
