On January 20, outgoing President Joseph Biden commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, who is age 80. See this story.

Peltier was the presidential nominee of the Peace & Freedom Party in 2004. The party nominated him to make a statement that he had been unjustly convicted. Pelter was also the original vice-presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in 2020. That party similarly wanted to highlight the injustice of his treatment. He resigned from the 2020 ticket, allegedly for health reasons, but actually because his attorneys believed his candidacy would damage his chances of leniency from President Trump.

On November 5, 2024, Idaho Libertarian nominee Todd Corsetti, running for U.S. House, 2nd district, polled 5.23%. This was the highest percentage that a minor party or independent candidate for U.S. House in Idaho had polled since 1926, when the Progressive Party polled 22.74% for one of the Idaho house seats.

Corsetti was in a four-person race, with Democratic, Republican, and Constitution Party opponents. His vote total was 21,310. The second district includes the eastern half of Idaho. The Republican incumbent, Mike Simpson, was easily re-elected.

Excluding races without one of the two major parties, Corsetti polled the highest percentage of the vote of any Libertarian running for U.S. House in 2024. Here is his website.

On Friday, January 17, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously cancelled a special legislative election set for January 28. The special election schedule had been set by Governor Tim Walz, and allowed only one day for any independent or minor party candidate to collect 500 signatures. Minnesota Voters Alliance and Republican Party of Minnesota v Walz, A25-0017.

The basis for the decision is the election law that says the schedule for the special election cannot be set until 22 days after the start of the legislative session. The special election is needed because one of the winning Democrats, the victor of the election in House district 40B, was successfully challenged after the election on the grounds that he did not live in his district. After a trial court removed him, he decided not to appeal. That case was called Wikstrom v Johnson. Once it became clear that the seat was vacant, the Governor called an immediate special election, but now the State Supreme Court has cancelled that election.