On October 8, a New Mexico state court put two candidates for City Council of Las Cruces on the ballot, even though the election is only four weeks from that date. The election is November 5. See this story. The court case was over whether the two candidates really had at least 25 valid signatures.

The absentee ballots had already been printed without the names of the two candidates, but the city clerk has printed up stickers with their names and will add them to the absentee ballots. As a result, the absentee ballots will need to be hand-counted.

The Mischiefs of Faction, a political science blog about political parties, has this piece by Professor Seth Masket about the possibility that the Republican Party might split and a new party might emerge. Masket does not think this is likely, at least in the short term, but it is interesting that he even wrote about the idea.

If the founders of Americans Elect had done what they could to keep their party on the ballot in the 29 states in which it qualified in 2012, that might have been the genesis for a new major party. It is still qualified in California and four other states, but if it doesn’t increase its registration in California by the beginning of 2014, it will lose its spot on the ballot in that state. The drive to put the party on the California ballot required 1,030,040 valid signatures, and probably cost $2,500,000.

The deadline for registering to vote in Virginia’s November 5, 2013 election is Monday, October 14. Meanwhile, the State Board of Elections has obtained a list of 77,000 Virginia voters that allegedly are also registered voters in some other state. The State Board has asked the various County and Independent City Boards to remove these voters from the rolls before the upcoming election.

On October 1, the Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit to stop the purge, until after the election. The lawsuit alleges that the list has many errors. The lawsuit also points out that federal law does not permit purges to occur closer than 90 days before an election, although that law only relates to federal elections, not elections for state office. Finally, the lawsuit says that a large proportion of the voters on the list registered in some other state as long ago as ten years, and that the same voters moved to Virginia after that time. The case is Democratic Party of Virginia v Virginia State Board of Elections, eastern district, 1:13cv-1218. Here is the Complaint.