On April 8, Arlington County, Virginia, held a special election to fill a vacant seat on the County Board. Independent candidate John Vihstadt won with an absolute majority, even though there were four candidates on the ballot. This is the first time since 1999 that any Democratic nominee ran and failed to win election to this office. Arlington County has a population of 207,627 and is directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The county has five board members. All seats are elected at-large. Although this is a partisan office, Virginia does not print party labels on general election ballots for county partisan office. Here is a link to the unofficial election returns. Here is a story about the outcome. Although the story says Vihstadt is a Republican, Virginia does not have registration by party. Because Vihstadt qualified for the ballot under the independent candidate procedures, and was not nominated by the Republican Party, that statement in the story is somewhat misleading. Thanks to Brandon Payne for the link.

This article describes the three-way contest for the Wyoming Republican gubernatorial nomination. The three candidates are incumbent Matt Mead, Cindy Hill, and Taylor Haynes.

The Wyoming Constitution Party has strong ties to both Hill and Haynes. In April 2011, Haynes (who won 7% of the November 2010 gubernatorial vote as a write-in candidate) addressed the National Committee meeting of the Constitution Party. The article has a link to his talk at that event.

And, in 2013, the Wyoming Constitution Party led the effort to gather signatures on a referendum petition, to repeal a law that stripped Cindy Hill of most of her duties. She is the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wyoming, but in 2013 the legislature passed a bill moving most of her duties to an appointed gubernatorial appointee. The Constitution Party did not get enough valid signatures to put that law to a referendum, but it get half-way and for a while the news media assumed that petition drive would succeed. Later, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled the measure unconstitutional.

On April 3, Deborah Sheldon, a Republican running for State Senate in the May 20 primary, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to strike down a 2013 law that says the list of voters who have requested an absentee ballot is not public information until after the primary or election is over. Sheldon says her campaign wants the list of registered Republicans who have requested an absentee ballot, so her campaign can send those voters campaign literature.

The list was public, until the 2013 legislature made it unavailable until the election is over. The state says the purpose for the 2013 law is because if candidates know who the absentee voters are before the election, they are likely to bribe those voters to vote a certain way. The lawsuit is Sheldon v Grimes, eastern district, 2:14cv-60.