On September 1, the Northern Mariana Islands Election Commission voted to change the ballot format in future elections (including this year’s gubernatorial election) from a party column format, to an office-group format. See this story.

The party column format promulgated a few weeks ago put the Republican column and the Covenant Party column on the front side of the ballot. The Democratic Party column, and independent columns, were on the back of the ballot. That lead to a protest, which caused the Commission to reverse itself.

On August 31, the office of Washington’s Secretary of State said that Referendum-71 had at least 1,000 more valid signatures than were needed. UPDATE: the state court weighing the challenge to this petition will issue its ruling on Wednesday morning, Sep. 2. See this story. The Referendum was filed to block a law passed by the legislature, to let same-sex couples have the same legal rights that married couples have. The referendum petition campaign has created two different lawsuits. One, in federal court, is over whether the names of petition signers should be public. The other, in lower state court, questions whether certain signatures should have been disallowed.

On August 31, Carl Romanelli, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania in 2006, filed his own pro se Petition for Reconsideration with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The case concerns the $80,000 that Romanelli’s challengers were awarded some years ago. The petition is here, and it is heartfelt and gets directly into details that the Pennsylvania state courts have overlooked in their previous actions in this case.