This AP story says a group that supports Democrats has persuaded conservative independents to run for U.S. House this year in districts that are closely balanced between the two major parties.
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The Green Party missed the deadline to file its presidential elector candidates in the District of Columbia, so even though it is a qualified party, Jill Stein won’t appear on the November ballot in Washington, D.C.
The Montana Democratic Party is asking the State Supreme Court to remove the Green Party nominee for U.S. Senate. Montana Democratic Party v Montana First Judicial District Court, OP-24-0424. Briefs from each side are submitted. Here is the brief of the candidate, Robert Barb.
If the Montana Supreme Court removes the candidate, that will be the third U.S. Senate election in a row in which that court has removed the Green Party nominee. The other instances were 2018 and 2020. There was no U.S. Senate election in Montana in 2022. After the State Supreme Court removed the Green Party entirely from the ballot in 2020, the Ninth Circuit struck down the Montana law that had caused that removal, which put the Green Party back on the ballot.
On September 13, a Michigan state circuit court rejected an attempt by a Democratic activist to keep all names off the ballot for Allegan County Board, district 3. Only one candidate had filed for that office, a Republican incumbent, and he had died shortly before the August 2024 primary. The Republican Party then chose a new nominee, but a Democratic activist who had run for the same seat two years ago then sued to block the substitution. If she had succeeded, no name would have been on the November ballot for that office. The Democratic activist has filed to be a write-in candidate for that office this year. See this story.
A bill to require ranked choice voting for all congressional primary and general elections has been introduced in both houses of Congress. The U.S. Senate sponsor is Peter Welch (D-Vermont). The two chief sponsors in the House are Jaime Raskin (D-Maryland) and Don Beyer (D-Virginia).
It would require ranked choice voting in both primaries and general elections, so that the current top-two systems in California and Washington would need to be revised. Furthermore, it says that if a state uses systems without party nominees, at least three candidates must be allowed to advance to the general election.
The bill says that if a state defines a qualified party in terms of how many votes it received in the last election, that state must give the party credit for the round of voting which produced the highest number of votes.
Here is the text. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet.