Five states held partisan primaries one June 2, but only Montana held a primary for a party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties (also, California held a top-two primary that had some minor party candidates running, but no party had nominees).
Here is a link to the Montana primary results, which includes the Libertarian Party’s U.S. Senate primary. Kyle Austin narrowly defeated Tom Jandron.
Here is a story from last month about the Libertarian Senate contest.
On the evening of Tuesday, June 2, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to reverse the lower 3-judge court in Allen v Singleton, 25A1316. The Court reinstated the districts drawn last month by the Alabama legislature. Here is the document and the dissent.
The Alabama Secretary of State now has the job of figuring out how many signatures will be needed for minor party and independent candidates to get on the November ballot. The formula is 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, i.e., the November 2022 gubernatorial vote. It is not easy to do this calculation, because obviously the districts drawn in May 2026 by the legislature did not exist in 2022.
There are uncontradicted precedents from Alabama, Montana, Illinois, Georgia, and Florida, that when the normal petitioning period is shortened, the state must reduce the number of signatures. The normal petitioning period in Alabama starts on the day of the previous general election. Alabama always defends its difficult petition requirements by pointing out that candidates have 20 months in which to get the signatures. But in this case, no one could have been petitioning for U.S. House because no one knew until tonight what the district boundaries would be. It will be interesting to see if Alabama lowers the requirements for U.S. House petitions. Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee this year eased petitioning requirements for U.S. House.
On June 2, the plaintiffs in Florida Decides Healthcare v Byrd filed a notice of appeal with the Eleventh Circuit. This is the lawsuit over the new Florida restrictions on the initiative process, including the ban on out-of-state circulators. The Eleventh Circuit case number is 26-11906.
On June 1, California filed this brief in Ware v Weber, e.d., 2:26cv-1643. This is the lawsuit filed by Butch Ware, Green Party candidate for California Governor, over the state’s unique law that says gubernatorial candidates must file copies of their income tax returns for the last five years. The state argues that the case is moot. That is a very weak argument. In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Moore v Ogilvie that ballot access constitutional cases are not moot just because the election is over before the case can be adjudicated.
On June 2, the Delaware Elections Commission posted new voter registration data. Here are the statewide totals for all currently qualified parties, and also all the parties that have been qualified in the state for the last few decades. Parties need 780 registrants by August 25 to place nominees on the 2026 ballot. The Delaware Green Party had 774 registrants on May 2, but now has declined to 761.
