On August 30, U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Scullin refused to move the general election for U.S. House, New York 3rd district, from November to December. The Republican primary for that district is October 6. One of the two Republicans running in that primary had asked the court to move the general election for that district only, to a later date, because he said it wasn’t fair to the winner of the Republican primary to have such a short time in which to campaign for the general election. Pidot v New York State Bd. of Elections, n.d., 1:16cv-859. But federal law, since 1872, has told states to hold their congressional elections in November of even-numbered years, in all districts.

The reason the Republican primary in that district is so late is that the same judge had ordered it to be on October 6. The original congressional primary in that district, in June, was tainted because the primary ballot had omitted one of the two Republican candidates, due to a mistaken belief that he didn’t have enough valid signatures. If New York used filing fees instead of petitions for primary ballot access, this incident would not have happened. A majority of states use filing fees and do not require any petitions for primary ballot access.

On August 30, Florida held primaries for the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties. Here is a link to the Secretary of State’s election returns. For U.S. Senate in the Libertarian primary, Paul Stanton defeated Augustus Invictus by 3:1.

In the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, Rocky De La Fuente got approximately 5.4% in a five-person race.

On August 16, the Nevada Green Party filed a lawsuit against the June 3 petition deadline for petitions for unqualified parties to submit their signatures. On August 26, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Dorsey, an Obama appointee, moved the hearing from August 31 to August 29. That hearing was held. See this newspaper story about the hearing. Three Democratic voters intervened in the case on the side of the state, saying they would be injured if Jill Stein gets on the ballot. The case is Nevada Green Party v Cegavske, 2:16cv-1951. An opinion is expected soon.

The basis for the lawsuit is that in 1992, a U.S. District Court had enjoined the deadline, which was June 10 back then. The legislature had moved the deadline to July the following year. But over the years, the legislature forgot why it had done that, and moved it back to April, and then in 2015 moved it to early June.