On July 12, the Nebraska Supreme Court refused to hear Rodgers v Heineman. This was the case filed by voters who wish to have their write-ins counted for Tom Osborne for Governor, in November. Osborne had lost the Republican primary in May. He has no interest in being a write-in candidate in November, but his passionate supporters wanted to cast a write-in for him anyway. State law says only write-ins cast for someone who filed a write-in declaration of candidacy will be counted. Also, another law won’t let primary losers file such a declaration of write-in candidacy.

On July 14, influential Democratic and Republican state legislators and party officials agreed to work for a different type of presidential primary in Michigan in 2008 and future elections.

Past Michigan presidential primaries have been secret-party- choice primaries. However, what is likely for 2008 is a presidential primary in which the voter must publicly choose a particular party’s primary ballot. Both types of primary are “open primaries” under the classic definition of “open primary”.

Under the 2008 proposal, the parties will then have access to the list of voters that chose their party’s primary. The bill to accomplish this change hasn’t been introduced yet, but it is about to be introduced.

Although Michigan has 6 qualified parties, only the Democratic and Republican Parties have their own primaries; the other qualified parties nominate by convention. The Democratic and Republican Parties want a presidential primary in which voters must publicly choose the primary ballot they wish to vote in. They feel that, under such a system, “strategic voting” will be minimized. Democrats believe that the old secret-party-choice system was responsible for George Wallace winning their 1972 primary (Democrats believe that many Republicans voted for Wallace, just to make trouble for the Democratic Party).

On July 11, the Labor Party turned in 16,500 signatures to the South Carolina Election Commission. If 10,000 are valid, the Labor Party will be ballot-qualified for elections in 2007 and beyond. Although the Labor Party has existed nationally since 1990, never before had it tried to qualify for the ballot in any state.

Also, the Working Families Party petition in South Carolina has now been checked, and the Working Families Party is now ballot-qualified. It is not clear if the WFP will seek to run any candidates in South Carolina this year.