Alaska held its primary on August 28. Alaska has a blanket primary for all parties except the Republican Party, and then there is a separate Republican primary ballot. Independents may choose either ballot.

In the blanket primary, for U.S. House, that ballot contained five Democrats and one Libertarian, Jim McDermott. McDermott polled 14.8%, placing third. Of course, because it is a blanket primary, the top vote-getter from each party advances to the general election. McDermott didn’t need to poll any particular number of votes to “win” the primary, since he was the only Libertarian running.

Unless someone filed as an independent candidate, the November race for U.S. House in Alaska will be between Republican incumbent Don Young (age 79), Democrat Sharon Cissna (age 70), and McDermott (age 55).

On August 17, the Alabama Democratic Party State Executive Committee voted to remove its nominee for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. See this story. The removal was based on comments that the nominee, Harry Lyon, had been making. The party replaced him with Bob Vance, a lower state court judge.

Alabama has partisan elections for State Judicial elections. Alabama law already permitted state political parties to prevent candidates from seeking a place on a primary ballot, based on whether the party perceives that the candidates is a loyal member of the party. But it seems somewhat surprising that Alabama also permits parties to remove their nominees, based on what the nominees say about political issues, after the primary is over. Lyon had been the only person who filed to run in the Democratic primary, which had been held in March.

On August 29, the Kentucky State Board of Elections unanimously resolved to treat all political parties equally, in the matter of how much money parties may contribute to their own nominees. Existing law provides that ballot-qualified parties may contribute up to $10,000 to any party nominee. Furthermore, if the nominee raised more than $10,000 from other sources, the cap on the party’s contribution rose to match the amount received from other sources. But the law seemed to limit donations from unqualified parties to their nominees to only $1,000.

Under the new policy, the unqualified parties will be treated the same as qualified parties, for purposes of determining limits on party contributions to party nominees. The Libertarian Party is responsible for raising this issue. Thanks to Ken Moellman for the news.