Leaders of No Labels are quoting President Joe Biden’s recent remarks affirming that voters have a right to create new parties and get them on the ballot. See this story.
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The Republican Party of the U.S. Virgin Islands will hold a caucus on February 8, 2024, to choose delegates to the national convention. Candidates have until December 31 to file. The caucus will use Ranked Choice Voting.
The only states choosing delegates to the Republican National Convention earlier than February 8 are Iowa and New Hampshire. The date of the New Hampshire presidential primary hasn’t been set yet.
U.S. territories have no electoral votes so they can’t participate in a binding way in the general election. But both major parties let the organized territories choose delegates to their national conventions.
On October 4, U.S. District Court Judge Judith Levy ordered mediation in the lawsuit Libertarian National Committee v Saliba, e.d., 5:23cv-11074. This is the trademark dispute involving factions of the Michigan Libertarian Party. The judge had previously issned an order preventing the faction not supported by the Libertarian National Committee from calling themselves “Libertarian Party of Michigan.” She has not yet decided whether to stay that. The mediation starts October 20.
The author of this paper is Kevin Kosar. Conservatives have been generally hostile to electoral reforms, usually positioning them as efforts by “the left” to bias election results in their favor.
Republicans have succeeded in banning Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in five states: Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota. Sarah Palin complained bitterly about RCV after her RCV election loss for US House from Alaska in 2022, and there is an effort in Alaska to repeal RCV, even though polls have shown that it is popular with Alaskans.
RCV is popular with Republican Party members in at least two states: Utah and Virginia. The Utah GOP has long used RCV for internal party elections, and the Virginia GOP nominated Glenn Youngkin using RCV at its 2021 Gubernatorial nominating convention. He went on to defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the November 2021 General Election. The Republican Party of Virginia has thereafter sometimes used RCV in privately run primary elections (historically called “firehouse primaries” in Virginia).
Thanks to Election Law Blog for spreading the word on this and for all it does.
My fellow editor, the great Richard Winger, has previously documented the 1948 presidential election vote analysis that indicates that the presence in the race of Henry Wallace of the Progressive Party helped, rather than hurt, the candidacy of Harry S Truman.
In this analysis, Nate Silver casts doubt on the standard analyses of the voting effects of independent and third party candidates and predicts that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presence in the 2024 presidential election will help, not hurt, President Biden.
Thanks to Political Wire for noticing this.