The Missouri Democratic Party has released its plan for its party-administered presidential primary in 2024. The polls will only be open between eight a.m. and noon on March 23, because it costs a lot of money to hire people to administer the polls, and the limited hours will cost less money. People can also vote by mail, if they request a mail ballot by March 12, and if they have registered as a Democrat on their voter registration form.

Also, Democrats are letting 17 year-olds participate, if they will be age 18 by the general election.

Missouri is in its first year of letting voters register into a party. The procedure for doing this was passed in 2022 and took effect January 1, 2023. So far the Secretary of State is not releasing any data about how many voters have registered into each party. The bill that set up the procedure was HB 1878. For government-administered primaries, whether a voter has registered into any particular party has no bearing on whether that voter can or cannot vote in any particular primary. Thanks to Ken Bush for the news about the Democratic presidential primary.

On August 18, a new lawsuit was filed against the 2021 New York law that won’t let primary voters cast a write-in vote for someone who is not a member of that party. Frentzel v Mohr, w.d., 1:23cv-854.

A somewhat similar lawsuit had been filed earlier in state court, Kowal v Mohr. Although the trial state court struck down the law, the appellate state court reversed and upheld the law. Thanks to Joe Burns for this news. Here is the federal Complaint, which is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra.

On Saturday afternoon, September 2, a state court in Florida issued an opinion striking down the state’s U.S. House districting plan. The basis is the Florida Constitution, which says in Article III, section 20, “No plan shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbant; and districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process…”.

Here is the decision in Black Voters Matter v Byrd, Leon County, 2022-CA-666. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.