Australia held a parliamentary election on August 21.  Although all the votes are not counted yet, it appears the neither major party won a majority in either house.

The House has 150 seats.  The tentative results are:  Labour 72, Liberal 72, Green 1, and 4 independents, with one seat too close to call.  Assuming the Greens do win that one seat, it will be the first time in history they have won a seat in the lower house.  This story describes the 4 independents and the one Green elected to the House.  The Green, Adam Bandt, was elected from Melbourne.  Australia uses a system very similar to Instant-Runoff Voting for House elections.  This story shows how that system made it possible for Bandt to win.

In the Senate, which is elected somewhat proportinately, the Greens may also have the balance of power.  See this story.  Greens already had five Senators and they may have eight Senators when all the votes are counted.

Last weekend, the Minnesota gubernatorial nominees of the Republican Party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and the Independence Party (Tom Emmer, Mark Dayton, and Tom Horner) debated each other.  The debate was feisty.  See this news story.

On August 17, the lawsuit Morton v Crist was moved from U.S. District Court in Fort Myers, back to state court in Fort Myers.  The lawsuit had originally been filed in state court on June 22, but it had moved to federal court in July.

The issue is whether various donors to Governor Charlie Crist are entitled to a refund of their campaign contributions.  They gave money to his U.S. Senate race while he was still running as a Republican.  They are angry that he switched to being an independent candidate.  They assert that this is a contract dispute, not a campaign finance lawsuit.  All campaign finance laws concerning candidates for federal office are federal laws; states are not permitted to have campaign finance laws for federal office.  This is partly why there has been so much confusion as to whether this case belongs in federal or state court.