Nevada holds a special election on September 13 to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 2nd district. All four ballot-listed candidates have been invited to debate each other on August 25. The debate is sponsored by a radio station, a television station, and Reno’s daily newspaper, the Gazette-Journal. The four candidates are: Republican Mark Amodei, Independent American Party nominee Tim Fasano, independent candidate Helmuth Lehman, and Democrat Kate Marshall.

The inclusiveness of this debate is an improvement for Nevada. In 2010, no televised debates for the Nevada major party nominees for Governor or U.S. Senator included any minor party or independent candidates.

Elizabeth May, the first Green Party nominee elected to the Canadian Parliament, will be one of the speakers at the Green Party’s national meeting August 5-7 in Alfred, New York. Thanks to GreenPartyWatch for this news.

On July 26, the Ohio Libertarian Party sent this two-page letter to the Ohio Secretary of State, asking him to rule that the Constitution, Green, Libertarian and Socialist Parties should not be removed from the ballot before the 2012 election. The parties were put on the ballot by court order in 2008, and they have remained on ever since because the old ballot access law had been declared unconstitutional in 2006 and had not been replaced. But, on July 1, the Governor signed a bill that purports to make the Ohio law constitutional.

The letter outlines precedents in which courts and election administrators have ruled that newly-passed ballot access hurdles should not be implemented in the middle of petitioning season. One of those precedents is from Ohio, in 1971.