This story describes the Indiana legislature’s deliberations on SB 352, a bill to revamp the election system for choosing state court trial judges in Indianapolis. The old system was held unconstitutional last year. The old system was technically a partisan election, but no party was permitted to run nominees for more than half the seats. Because only the Democratic and Republican Parties usually nominated judicial candidates, effectively the voters had no choice. The candidates named on the November ballot couldn’t be defeated, unless a very strong write-in candidate emerged.

The Women’s Equality Party of New York is refusing to nominate the Democratic nominee in the April 19 special election for Assembly, 65th district. See this story. As far as is known, this is the first time the Women’s Equality Party has abstained from cooperating with the Democratic Party since the party was born in 2014. The Democratic nominee, Alice Cancel, is a woman.

On February 22, the California Secretary of State published voter registration data as of January 5, 2016. See the Report of Registration here. The last tally had been as of February 10, 2015. The number of registered voters declined over the past year. The February 2015 total was 17,717,936; the new total is 17,259,413.

No new parties qualified as a result of the new tally. If any previously unqualified party had as many as 56,957 registrants in this tally, it would be qualified for both 2016 and 2018. But no such party qualified. The Reform Party has asked to be a political body, and to have a tally, but it did not make the request in time for this tally. It probably has about 15,000 registrants. The largest political body in the January 4, 2016 tally is the Constitution Party, which has 338 registrants. In February 2015 it had had 325. Unqualified parties can still participate in the November 2016 presidential election if they obtain enough registrations by July 11, 2016.

Parties that declined, as a share of the registration, between February 2015 and January 2016, are: Democratic, from 43.15% to 43.10%; Republican, from 27.98% to 27.62%; Green, from .62% to .59%; and Peace & Freedom, from .442% to .438%.

Parties that increased their share between February 2015 and January 2016 are: American Independent, from 2.71% to 2.73%; and Libertarian, from .69% to .70%. Independents plus unqualified parties grew from 24.41% to 24.81%.

The March 1, 2016 printed BAN will have a chart showing the number of registered voters in each party, in each state.