On May 26, Nevada Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) introduced AB 597. It lets independent voters vote in partisan primaries, including the presidential primaries. Here is a news story about the bill. Although the Nevada legislature is only in session for one more week, the rules let the Speaker introduce bills that don’t need to worry about normal legislative deadlines. However, Nevada has a Republican Governor, and he is likely to veto the bill if it passes.
Jim Walden, an independent candidate for Mayor of New York city, was not permitted to use “Independence” as his ballot label, so he has chosen “Integrity” instead.
Three books published recently on the subject of the 2024 presidential election have become best-sellers, but only one of them mentions the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. independent candidacy. “Fight; Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes says this about Kennedy: “On August 23, the day after the Democratic convention ended, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his independent bid for the presidency. Many of his Democratic-leaning supporters had already lined up behind Harris, meaning that his third-party candidacy could derail Trump. Though he registered in the lowto mid single digits of most multi-candidate surveys, he was in a position to play spoiler. Kennedy, son of the slain former attorney general, senator, ande presidential candidate, had built a following through an unorthodox coalition that included vaccine skeptics. Trump had long pursued Kennedy’s endorsement, and his delivery promised to give him new voters.”
Another book, “Original Sin”, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, does not mentioned Kennedy’s independent run, except to quote one sentence spoken by President Joe Biden saying that “Kennedy had announced for the Democratic nomination and had fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent.”
A third book, “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History”, by Chris Whipple, does not mention the Kennedy independent candidacy. That book was reviewed in the May 1 2025 Ballot Access News print edition.
U.S. SUPREME COURT HELPS INITIATIVE PROCESS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2015
On April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court ended its stay in Brown v Yost, 24A970, and thereby helped initiative proponents in Ohio. This is the first action the U.S. Supreme Court has taken to help an initiative get on the ballot, or to take effect, since 2015.
The case involved Ohio procedures for initiative proponents to get permission to circulate their petitions. Proponents write their own description of what their initiative does. This goes on the petition form.
In Ohio, uniquely, proponents must get the Attorney General’s approval of their description. A group that wanted to circulate a petition concerning wrongful criminal convictions submitted its description seven times, and each time the Attorney General rejected it, sometimes for the most picayune reason. Once he rejected it because of a missing space between two words. Many times, he only submitted one objection, and then when they tried again, he chose another “flaw” that had been in the earlier versions. In other words, he wouldn’t combine all his objections.
On May 6, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed Senate Bill 287. It provides that candidates for School Boards can list a party affiliation on the ballot. However, parties would not have nominees for that office. The bill is vague about whether a candidate can list a party that is not ballot-qualified.
