According to this story, the Alabama Committee that handles election law bills will take up the bill to convert primaries from open to closed on April 7.
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On April 6, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled unanimously that Maine can’t use Ranked Choice Voting for general elections for state office unless the Constitution is changed. Opinion of the Justices, 2026 ME 32. Here is the Opinion.
On Sunday, April 5, the Independence Party of Illinois asked to intervene in the pending ballot access case that had been filed in 2024 by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. while he was an independent presidential candidate. Here is the filing. The lawsuit challenges Illinois law that does not permit anyone to circulate a petition for a candidate in a primary election and also to circulate for someone else in a general election.
According to this story, New Jersey state courts are still enforcing the state’s ban on out-of-state circulators. The story is about a petition challenge to a Democratic candidate for U.S. House, Sue Altman. She submitted approximately 1,000 signatures and she needed 500. She survived the challenge, but all her signatures collected by out-of-state students were invalidated.
However, a U.S. District Court declared the residency requirement for circulators to be unconstitutional in Arsenault v Way in 2021. Here is that decision. 3:16cv-01854.
Last month, two gubernatorial candidates filed petitions to be on the primary ballot of the Arizona Independent Party, Teri Hourihan and Hugh Lytle. On April 3, Hourihan filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that Lytle doesn’t have enough valid signatures. Hourihan v Lyttle, Maricopa County Superior Court, cv2026-014149.
News reports say Lytle submitted approximately 6,000. The petition requirement is 1,771. It is unknown how many signatures Hourihan submitted. The signers must be either registered members of the party, or voters who are not registered in any qualified party.