On July 15, Congressman John Delaney (D-Maryland) spoke about his HB 2655, which mandates top-two primaries for congressional elections, and also directs that Congress study redistricting for U.S. House districts. Delaney spoke on the telephone to a conference call audience organized by IndependentVoting. IndependentVoting is the new name for the group that was once the New Alliance Party, then the Patriot Party, then part of the Reform Party, then Committee for a Unified Independent Party.

Here is a link to the entire 28-minute conference call. Congressman Delaney does not mention the top-two part of his bill until the nine minute mark. The only advantage to a top-two primary that he mentions is so that independents can vote in primaries. Neither he, nor hostess Jackie Salit, mentions that independents can also vote in congressional primaries if the state has an open primary, or a semi-closed primary, or a blanket primary. From listening to the call, one would never know that in two-thirds of all U.S. House districts, it is already possible for independent voters to vote in congressional primaries of both major parties, without that voter having to join the party. In still other districts, independents can vote in Democratic congressional primaries but not Republican ones.

When Jackie Salit describes the bill, early in the call, she says it applies to all federal office. But it does not apply to presidential elections.

Congressman Delaney seemed more eager to talk about the part of the bill that would require a study of independent redistricting commissions. Neither he nor anyone mentioned that in November 2014, there were three candidates on the ballot in Delaney’s district: Delaney received 94,704; the Republican received 91,930; and the Green received 3,762. Delaney represents a swing district and he might feel that a top-two system would be better for him personally, because in a top-two system the Green would not have been on the November ballot.

According to this Newsday story, two lawsuits have been filed to challenge the legal existence of the Women’s Equality Party of New York. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link.

The plaintiffs are ordinary voters, and they are following the standard methods for challenging petitions. Yet, the formation of the Women’s Equality Party doesn’t depend on any particular petition; instead it relates to the approval of the party’s statewide candidates for the party’s rules. The two identical cases are in Niagara County and Nassau County. The Niagara County case is Tamburlin v State Board of Elections, 15-6326. The Nassau County case is Giovanelli v State Board of Elections, 15-6294.

The United Independent Party is a ballot-qualified party in Massachusetts. However, Massachusetts requires every qualified party to do one of two things to remain ballot-qualified: (1) poll 3% for any statewide race; (2) have registration equal to 1% of the state total.

The United Independent Party, formed in 2014, does not expect to have a presidential nominee in 2016. It is only interested in Massachusetts state government issues. And in 2016, there are no other statewide races on the ballot in Massachusetts. Therefore, the party will lose its status unless it can get its registration up to approximately 40,000 members by November 2016.

The party has been working on getting more registrants, and at the end of June 2014, it had 6,100. If the party achieves its registration goal, it will be the first party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, to have met that goal. The 1% registration alternative has only existed in the law since 1990.