The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin has this story about the decision striking down the Illinois law that requires newly-qualifying parties to run a full slate of candidates.
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The Sacramento Bee has this story about the rise in the number of voters registered in minor parties in California, compared to four years ago. The story was brought about because a few days ago, California released its first voter registration data since February 2015. Thanks to Irv Sutley for the link.
The American Shopping Party has qualified as a political party in Hawaii. The party is the creation of John Giuffre, author of seven books about economics. See this link. The party seems to desire an end to consumerism and is influenced by ideas from eastern religions.
The Constitution Party and the American Shopping Party are the only two parties that submitted a petition this year. The Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and Green Parties were already on the ballot.
On February 26, the Center for Competitive Democracy filed an amicus curiae brief in Libertarian Party of New Hampshire v Gardner, the case pending in the First Circuit. The issue is the 2014 New Hampshire law that made it illegal to circulate the party petition in an odd year.
On February 26, the Florida Secretary of State released new data on how many registered voters there are in each party. Compared to October 2014, the percentage of Republicans has risen from 34.97% to 35.45%. The Democratic percentage has declined from 38.79% to 37.89%. The percentage of voters registered in qualified minor parties has dropped from 2.95% to 2.79%. The number of independent voters has risen from 23.29% to 23.87%.
Here is a link to the new data.
Here is a link to the October 2014 data, which had been the most recent report that includes all qualified parties, until today’s data was released.