New York was the only state with two presidential candidates on the ballot, a shocking fact that the New York mainstream news media have ignored for several months. Finally, on November 4, the day before the election, Spectrum News 1 covered the news. See this story. Spectrum News 1 is a group of television stations, all in western New York.

The first time the U.S. Supreme Court ever struck down a ballot access law was in Ohio in 1968, in Williams v Rhodes. The key fact in that case, weighing against Ohio, was that Ohio that year had been the only state with only two presidential candidates. The U.S. Supreme Court has said twice that if a ballot access law is so harsh that it is almost never used, it is almost certainly unconstitutional. So the fact of New York’s exclusionary ballot is of great legal significance, and it ought to be a fact of great public interest inside New York. Yet so far none of the state’s print newspapers has mentioned it.

On November 5, the Working Class Party polled enough votes to become ballot-qualified for 2026 in the Illinois Fourth U.S. House district. Ed Hershey polled 5.11% of the vote, meeting the 5% vote test.

Although Illinois has some of the worst ballot access laws in the nation for minor parties and independents, Illinois does allow parties to become ballot-qualified in just part of the state, if they meet the vote test in that portion of the state.

Hershey was running against both a Democrat and a Republican. This is the first time the Working Class Party has attained qualified party status anywhere in the U.S., other than in Maryland and Michigan.

On November 5, Arizona voters defeated two ballot measures that would have curtailed the statewide initiative process. Measure 134 would have required a significant number of signatures in each of the 30 state legislative districts. Currently there is no distribution requirement for initiative petitions.

Measure 136 would have permitted the state courts to decide that a proposed initiative is illegal or unconstitutional, before voters had voted on it. Currently if an initiative gets enough valid signatures, it goes on the ballot, and only if it passes can anyone sue to show that the measure is unconstitutional or illegal.