On May 8, Steven Maviglio filed paperwork with the California Secretary of State to begin an initiative petition to repeal top-two. It would restore the California Constitution the way it was during the years 2002 through 2010. Qualified parties would have the right to place their nominee on the general election ballot. Each party would be free to decide whether to let independents vote in its primaries.

Here is the website for the initiative. It reveals that leading Democratic Party leaders, and also some Republican Party leaders, support the initiative. The initiative would be on the November 2028 ballot if it gets enough valid signatures. The current requirement is 874,641 signatures, to be collected in ten months.

Maviglio was once named one of the most influential Democratic Party leaders in California. He has worked for several Speakers of the Assembly and also for former Governor Gray Davis. He has run initiative campaigns for two dozen initiatives.

If the initiative passed, write-ins in the general election for congress and state office would automatically be restored, because the part of the election law that bans write-ins for those office in November would no longer pertain to any actual election.

This is the second initiative to be filed to repeal top-two. The first one, in 2017, authored by Tom Palzer, a Republican, did not get enough signatures to get on the ballot.

On May 4, four bills were introduced in the Tennessee legislature to draw new U.S. House district boundaries, HB 7001, 7002, 7003, and 7005. The bills also extend the petition deadline for independent candidates for U.S. House from March 10 to May 15. Furthermore, they provide that signatures may be collected anywhere in any county that is in the new district, regardless of whether the signer lives in the new district. Only 25 signatures are needed for independent candidates for either house of Congress.

As to independent candidates who were already on the ballot, the Secretary of State is giving each of them a chance to choose which district to run in, without the need for a new petition.

The Tennessee redistricting has already been attacked by at least three lawsuits.

An independent candidate who was already on the ballot, Pamela Moses, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that changing the districts at this point violates due process. She says that she had already been campaigning in the old district (the 8th) for two years, and the new districts will mean that she has wasted a large share of her campaign resources. She had obtained the list of registered voters in the old district and had reached out to them, but now much of that is wasted effort. Moses v Lee, w.d., 2:26cv-2533, filed May 8. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Mark S. Norris, a Trump appointee.

Here is the story.

Currently, Mississippi has three Republicans and one Democrat (Bennie Thompson) in the US House. Undoubtedly, redistricting would do away with the Democratic district rather easily.