On August 31, two Virginia voters filed a federal lawsuit to keep former President Donald Trump off the Virginia Republican presidential primary ballot. Perry-Bey v Trump, e.d., 1:23cv-1165. Like similar lawsuits in other states, the case is based on Section Three of the 14th amendment.
Here is the Complaint. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Magistrate Ivan D. Davis.
On September 11, 2023, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called a Special Election to fill a vacant seat in the Minnesota House due to a member’s resignation. The date of the Special Election is Tuesday, December 5. The date of the primaries of the Democratic (Democratic-Farmer-Labor in Minnesota) and Republican primaries is November 16.
Yet, the Governor mandated the petitioning period for minor parties and Independent candidates to run from Wednesday, September 13 to Tuesday, September 19 at 5PM, with a requirement of 500 valid signatures of registered voters from within District 52B.
Minnesota’s harsh ballot access laws usually require such a petition drive to be completed within two weeks, but the Governor arbitrarily trimmed the petitioning period by half for this Special Election.
Also, given that this State House district is in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, petitioning will be much more difficult, as it will have to be conducted door-to-door, according to Cara Schulz of the Libertarian Party of Minnesota. Petitioning at public locations in this situation will cause a low validity rate due to a likely high percentage of out-of-district voters signing the petition because of widespread voter ignorance of the State House district of their residence.
Release_ LPMN on Special Election in House District 52B is a press release on this matter from the Libertarian Party of Minnesota.
The State of Illinois recently created a Ranked Choice Voting Task Force to study possible implementation of Ranked Choice Voting, with an emphasis on possible adoption for presidential primaries in 2028. A final report is due by March 1, 2024, but, as of today, according to this link, it appears that 16 of the 20 members of the Task Force have yet to be appointed.
The Fall 2023 edition of Democracy Journal includes a symposium on the subject of Proportional Representation. Here is a link to that edition of Democracy Journal.
Thanks to the FairVote daily email for the link to this.
On August 30, the Federal Election Commission updated its useful chart of 2024 primary dates, both for president and for congress. See it here.
There is still doubt about the New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania presidential primary dates. Also it is still undetermined whether Idaho will have any presidential primaries.
