On June 5, the Working Families Party turned in 20,000 signatures to the Oregon Secretary of State, so as to qualify as a political party. The state requires 18,381, so there probably aren’t enough valid signatures yet. But the state will check the signatures and tell the party how many more are needed.

The party has no plans to run a candidate for statewide office this year (Governor is the only statewide office up), but may run for a few legislative and county offices. Within a year, the party will need to boost its registration up to one-half of 1% of the state total, in order to stay on the ballot (since it will not have polled 1% for any statewide race in 2006, since it won’t run for Governor).

The Massachusetts Republicans running for State Treasurer and State Auditor have both failed to gather enough valid signatures to win a place on the primary ballot. Therefore, the party will not have any nominees for those two offices. They each needed 5,000 signatures of registered Republicans or registered independents. Massachusetts ballot access for primary elections is very difficult, yet for some reason the press in Massachusetts never discusses this point.

The Alameda County, California Board of Supervisors has decided to buy Sequoia vote-counting machines to replace the Diebold machines. This makes it far more likely that Berkeley (which is in Alameda County) will now be able to implement its desire to use IRV in city elections. Berkeley voters voted to use IRV back in March 2004, but the county’s Diebold machines posed a roadblock.