On April 9, a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., stopped the scheduled May 11, 2013 election for School Board in Beaumont, Texas, under the federal Voting Rights Act. The case is Beaumont Independent School District v U.S., civ 13-401. The reason the election was stopped is that the School District, and a Texas State Court of Appeals, had ruled that all seven seats should be up for election in May, yet this decision was not made until after the candidate qualification period had closed. Some of the incumbent members of the Board had not filed for re-election because, under the old rules, their seats weren’t up. Under the new rules, their seats were up, but they had not had a chance to file to be on the ballot.

The election will now be held in November 2013.

Many municipalities in Illinois have partisan city and town elections, but the parties are local parties that exist only in that municipality. In North Riverside Village, the two parties are the Voters Improvement Party (which is an old party that has held power for decades) and a new party, the Transparency & Accountability in Politics Party.

The new party only appeared on the April 9 ballot because it won a lawsuit. It had been removed from the ballot on the grounds that Illinois state law says parties can have no more than five words in their name. But the State Appeals Court put the party back on, ruling that an ampersand is not a word. See this story.

On April 9, Jessica Bradshaw was elected to an at-large city council seat in Carbondale, Illinois. Bradshaw is a Green Party member, although the election is non-partisan. Twelve candidates appeared on the ballot and voters were permitted to vote for three candidates to fill the three seats.

Bradshaw, 32, is the daughter of Richard Whitney (Green Party gubernatorial nominee in 2006 and 2010), and Paula Bradshaw (Green Party U.S. House nominee in 2012). Carbondale is a college city in southern Illinois and has a population of 26,000. UPDATE: Illinois Greens probably also won three non-partisan races for Library Board, and won a non-partisan School Board election. Of those four additional wins, three were re-elections, and one was a new office-holder. Thanks to Mike for the news.