Ballotpedia has analyzed the primary election returns from August 7. See here. In Kansas, 34% of all incumbent legislators running for re-election who had primary opponents were defeated. Kansas has closed primaries.

In Michigan, which has an open primary, 14% of all legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated. In Missouri, which also has an open primary, 23% of the legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated.

But in Washington state, which has a top-two primary, not a single legislative incumbent was defeated for re-election. These results confirm earlier research that no system is kinder to incumbents running for re-election than top-two systems. In California’s top-two primary in June this year, no incumbents were defeated. Thanks to Eric O’Keefe for the link.

Both the Republican and the Democratic primaries for Michigan’s U.S. House race in the eleventh district were interesting this year. The primary was August 7. Here is an article about the results.

On August 1, Pennsylvania state election officials rejected the petitions of an independent candidate for U.S. House, 2nd district. The reason is that his ballot label is “independent.” The day before, another candidate with the ballot label “independent” had also filed in the same race. The state cited a law that says two parties with the same name cannot both appear on the ballot for the same office.

The rejected candidate, Jim Foster, is the editor of Germantown Newspapers. He believes that the Democratic incumbent, who is running for re-election, deliberately found another candidate to file with the same label, “independent.” The other candidate who used “independent” as a ballot label, Robert J. Osborn, filed the day before Foster did. Foster actually attempted to file on the day before, but elections officials encouraged him to delay filing.

The U.S. Supreme Court said in Storer v Brown, 415 U.S. 724, that there are two kinds of candidate in partisan races, independent candidates, and candidates who are nominees of political parties, whether new, old, major, or minor. In other words, an independent candidate is a special category of candidate. Using that logic, two State Supreme Courts ruled that state legislatures, or election officials, cannot bar candidates from having the word “independent” on the ballot next to their names. The Massachusetts Supreme Court, in 1981, in Bachrach v Sec. of the Commonwealth, 415 NE 2d 832, unanimously struck down a law that said independent candidates could only describe themselves on the ballot as “unenrolled”, and ordered the state to let a candidate use the word “independent”.

The Minnesota Supreme Court, in 1976, told the Secretary of State that he must let an independent candidate use that word on the ballot. The Secretary of State had denied the label, on the grounds that the Republican Party had changed its name to the “Independent-Republican Party”, and that since a new party can’t use a word in the name of an old party, that therefore “independent” was not permitted.

On August 3, Foster sued the Pennsylvania Elections Department. The case is Foster v Pennsylvania Department of State, Commonwealth Court, 500-MD-2012. On August 6, the court asked the two parties to settle. At the upcoming hearing on August 9, it is likely that the elections officials will allow him to be on the ballot if he chooses another label. He will probably choose “Philadelphia Party.” See this story.