The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader here reprints an editorial from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, condemning Pennsylvania’s ballot access laws.
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Ken Krieger, one of the three candidates for one of the City Council seats in Peoria, Arizona, is about to decide whether to sue election officials for omitting his name from all absentee ballots. See this story. Replacement ballots have been mailed, but the notice with the replacement ballot just said that voters should vote again because one candidate’s name had been omitted from the first ballot. That notice did not even name Krieger. Thanks to Kory Langhofer for the link.
On August 5, Washington state held its fourth top-two primary. No candidate for Congress or any partisan state office, who was not a Democrat or Republican, managed to place first or second, in races that had at least two major party members running. The non-major party candidates who ran in State House races with at least two major party candidates included eight independents, four Libertarians, and one Green. The non-major party candidates who ran in U.S. House races included one Green and twelve independents.
However, there were many State House races in which only one major party candidate ran. For these races, Libertarians ran eight candidates, Socialist Alternative ran one, and independents ran in five districts. Naturally, with only two candidates running, all fourteen of these non-major party candidates placed second and will be on the November ballot.
No minor party or independent candidates ran for any of the 25 State Senate seats.
In the U.S. House races, in November all will have one Democrat running against one Republican, except in the Fourth District, where two Republicans will be on the ballot. This will be the first U.S. House general election in Washington between two members of the same party. Here is a link to the election returns. Washington has no statewide races up this year.
On August 5, Public Policy Polling released an Alaska poll, for both Governor and U.S. Senate. The poll included all general election candidates. Because the primaries haven’t been held yet, and the Republican U.S. Senate primary is considered difficult to predict, alternate Republican nominees were presented. However, the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate is also difficult to predict, yet PPP seemed to assume that the Libertarian nominee would be Mark Fish. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
On August 4, Virginia filed this brief in Sarvis v Judd, the Libertarian Party case that argues the Constitution requires Virginia to give every candidate an equal opportunity to obtain the top spot on the general election ballot. The case is Sarvis v Judd, U.S. District Court, 3:14-cv-479. Current law says that only the qualified parties ever enjoy the top line. Virginia defines “party” to be a group that polled at least 10% of the vote in either of the last two previous elections. Virginia’s 10% vote test is tied for being the second most severe vote test in the nation.