The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Lake v Fontes, 23-1021, on April 19. This is the case filed by two Arizona Republican candidates for statewide office in the 2022 elections. They want to stop use of certain vote-counting machines.
On March 29, four organizations filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Georgia case over Public Service Commission elections. The brief suggests that proportional representation could be used. Currently, Georgia elects all five members of the Commission in partisan, standard statewide elections. The lawsuit had been filed by groups that argued that system violates the ability of African-Americans to elect members of their choice. The Eleventh Circuit had rejected the lawsuit and had assumed that the only remedy would be creating five districts, each district electing one Commissioner.
Fairvote, RepresentUS, Project Democracy, and the Campaign Legal Center submitted the amicus, and they point out there are other alternatives to districts, such as a Single-Transferable vote, Cumulative Voting, or Limited Voting. Here is their amicus.
Votes have all been counted in the California March 5, 2024 primary in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, so it is now possible to know that there is a tie for second place in the U.S. House race, 16th district. No incumbent was running. Nine Democrats and two Republicans appeared on the primary ballot. Democrat Sam Licardo, a county supervisor, placed first with 38,489 votes. Evan Low, an Assemblymember, and Joe Simitian, a former Mayor of San Jose, each got 30,249 votes. They are also both Democrats. So three Democrats will be on the November ballot.
This is the second time the California top-two system has produced a tie for second place, with the result that three candidates qualified for November. The first instance was in 2016, in the 62nd Assembly race, when only a Democrat had appeared on the primary ballot, and two write-in candidates (a Republican and a Libertarian) had been write-in candidates in the primary and each got 32 write-in votes, so all three went into the November election.
In theory, in the current race, one of the candidates could ask for a recount, but that is not expected to happen, because whoever requested the recount would need to spend a lot of money on the recount.
The Third Circuit will hear the New Jersey ballot format case on Friday, April 12, at 9:30 a.m.
According to this article, a Missouri activist, Jared Young, will attempt to qualify “The Better Party” for the ballot this year. It is a centrist organization.
