On November 5, Tyson Parker filed this reply brief in his lawsuit against the New Mexico law that requires independent candidates to submit a petition of 3% of the last gubernatorial vote.
Reply
On November 5, the Arizona Libertarian and Green Parties asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case against the discriminatory Arizona voter registration form. Even though Arizona has four qualified parties, the form only lists the two largest parties and gives them a checkbox. If a voter wants to register into the ballot-qualified plaintiff parties, the voter must write them in on the line marked “other”. Here is the cert petition. The case number is 15-598.
The reason the U.S. Supreme Court might plausibly take this case is that the Court needs to clarify the standards for such cases. Supposedly laws that discriminate against minor parties and independent candidates are subject to heightened scrutiny; only nondiscriminatory laws get rational basis review. But in this case, the Ninth Circuit did not apply heightened scrutiny even though the law is discriminatory.
The Republican Party won Kentucky’s gubernatorial race on November 3 with an absolute majority of the vote (52% in a three-way race), but polls had said the Democratic nominee would win. This outcome is more evidence that election polls in this era are not accurate. See here for the Huffington Post story about this.
Mississippi elected statewide executive positions and a new legislature on November 3, 2015. This article has the statewide vote totals. The Reform Party had a complete slate of statewide nominees, and the Libertarian Party had two statewide nominees.
Ten California Green Party members won elections for non-partisan local office on November 3. See the list here. Thanks to IndependentPolitical Report for the link.