The South Jersey Times has this story about the drawing for ballot placement in Gloucester County, drawing attention to the fact that Democratic and Republican Party nominees always get the top spots on the ballot and their own party column, whereas all other candidates are put helter-skelter into a “Nomination by Petition” column (although a handful of counties don’t use party columns).

New Jersey has the most discriminatory ballots in the nation, but there has never before been so much New Jersey press attention to the problem.

Maggie Toulouse Oliver, the Democratic nominee for New Mexico Secretary of State this year, wants to restore the straight-ticket device. Presumably if she wins the election, she will restore it by regulation. The New Mexico election code has never authorized the straight-ticket device, but before the current Secretary of State, Dianna Duran, was elected in 2010, past Secretaries of State (all Democrats) put io tn the ballot anyway. Duran removed it prior to the 2012 election. Democrats sued her over that, but did not prevail.

On August 8, the California State Appeals Court in San Francisco agreed to let the California Green Party file an amicus curiae brief in Rubin v Bowen, the case that argues that the top-two system violates the rights of voters who wish to vote for minor party candidates in the general election. The original plaintiffs in that case include the Alameda Green Party, the Peace & Freedom Party, and the state Libertarian Party. The state Green Party was not, and is not, part of the case itself.

The groups that support the top-two system always intervene in every case on the California top-two system. They are Steve Peace’s Independent Voters Project, and Californians for an Open Primary. Courts always let them intervene. Yet these groups asked the California State Appeals Court not to let the Green Party of California file an amicus brief, on the grounds that the Green Party of Alameda County and the state Green Party are essentially the same organization, and that to permit the amicus would not be fair to the supporters of the top-two system.