Oregon holds a special election on January 31, 2012, to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 1st district. The vacancy was caused when incumbent David Wu resigned earlier this year. On September 28, the Oregon Libertarian Party held a nominating convention and chose James Foster. See this story on the party’s web page. The deadline for Oregon’s qualified minor parties to nominate someone is December 1. Republicans and Democrats are choosing a nominee by primary. The all-mail primary ballots are being mailed on October 21, and all major party primary ballots are due by November 8.

Oregon’s other ballot-qualified minor parties are: Pacific Green, Constitution, Working Families, Progressive, and Independent. The Independent Party and the Working Families Party are likely to cross-nominate one of the major party nominees, so they will probably wait until after the major party primaries are held.

On October 15, the final debate was held for the four candidates in the special legislative election in the Third Berkshire District, Massachusetts State House. The four candidates are the Green Party’s Mark Miller, Democrat Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Republican Mark Jester, and independent Pam Malumphy. The election is Tuesday, October 18. This is the district in which Miller, the Green Party nominee, polled 45% in a two-person race in November 2010.

See this story, which focuses on the spirited exchange between the independent candidate and the Democratic nominee.

On October 14, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously that opponents of the new U.S. House and legislative districts are entitled to submit the redistricting plans to a referendum. See this story. The Republican majority in the legislature had argued that the redistricting bill is not subject to the referendum process, because the bill contained an appropriation. However, the State Supreme Court rejected that as a gimmick. Here is the 6-page opinion, State ex rel Ohioans for Fair Districts v Husted, 2011-5333.

This means that Ohio can’t use the new district boundaries during the next few months, because laws subject to referendum can’t go into effect until the voters vote. Since the primary is in March 2012, that presents a large problem for election administration. Democrats and their allies in Ohio have shown that they do have the resources to complete successful referendum petitions.