On May 22, U.S. District Court Judge William K. Watkins, Jr., whose court is in Montgomery, Alabama, cancelled the May 24 hearing in Stein v Chapman, the ballot access lawsuit filed by the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties. In its place, he has set a new briefing schedule, and opened the door for new evidence, due June 15. The judge indicated he wants to learn on June 15 whether the three parties are actually working on their Alabama party petition. The presumption is that if they are actively working, he is somewhat inclined to grant injunctive relief against the March petition deadline.

This is not as helpful an approach as the action taken in the California ballot access case, which, like the Alabama case, challenges the early petition deadline for newly-qualifying parties. In the California case, the judge issued an injunction against the early deadline, even though no one knows if the plaintiff political parties (the Justice Party and the Constitution Party) will be able to take advantage of the extra time. In the Alabama case, it is difficult for the political parties to muster the energy to circulate the party petition, when they can’t know for sure that their efforts will be rewarded.

Egypt held a presidential election on May 23-24. Because no one got as much as 50%, there will be a run-off on June 16-17. Although official election returns have not yet been announced, it appears that the two most polarizing major candidates will advance to the run-off. Here is the wikipedia page about the election. Also see this news story.

Mohammed Mursi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, placed first with 5,553,097 votes (25.30%). Close behind is Ahmed Shafiq, a former Prime Minister under former President Mubarak. He had originally been barred from the race because of his close association with the past discredited government, but he won an appeal and was allowed to run. He received 5,210,978 votes (23.74%). Those two will be in the run-off.

The candidate who placed third, Hamdeen Sabbahi, received 4,739,983 votes (21.60%). He campaigned as a populist, and his base of support was poor neighborhoods in urban areas.

The candidate who placed fourth, Abdelmoneim Abol-Fotouh, received 3,939,264 votes (17.95%). He was a moderate Islamist and a Salafist.

The candidate who placed fifth, Amr Moussa, received 2,407,837 (10.97%). He had once been the front-runner, and is a former chief of the Arab League. All the other candidates together received less than one-half of 1% of the total vote. The ballot listed 13 names, but two had withdrawn before the voting.

These results show the deficiency of election systems that don’t use either Ranked Choice Voting, or Approval Voting. If either of those two alternate systems had been used, the results probably would have been very different.

On May 25, the Oklahoma legislature adjourned for the year, without having passed HB 1058. The bill would have lowered the number of signatures for newly-qualifying parties. It passed both houses, but each house passed a different version, and the conference committee never met to reconcile the differences.