The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Mazo v Way, 22-1033, at its June 15 conference. This is the case over New Jersey ballot labels for primary candidates. The state restricts the content.
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On May 30, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the bill legalizing recreational marijuana. Normally BAN would not post this type of news, but it is relevant to this website because Minnesota has recently had two ballot-qualified third parties that made this their number one issue. Minnesota becomes the 23rd state with legal recreational marijuana.
There is still a federal ban and the Legal Marijuana Now Party, which is still on the ballot, is keen to work on doing what it can against the federal ban, which obviously relates to congressional elections.
On May 26, the Oklahoma legislature adjourned. It did not pass any significant election law bills.
Bills that failed to pass were: (1) SB 518, which would have specified that initiative and referendum petitions must be signed by voters who use their “legal” name and which would have charged a filing fee of up to $750 before an initiative could start to circulateo; (2) SB 568, which would have repealed the straight-ticket device; (3) SB 288, which would have reduced the number of signatures needed on petitions in lieu of the filing fee.
According to this story, the Legal Marijuana Now Party, the only ballot-qualified third party in Minnesota, may change its name. The budget bill passed earlier this month raised the vote test from 5% to 8%, but that change doesn’t take effect until after the November 2024 election, so the party is on the ballot for 2024.
Minnesota law explicitly lets qualified parties change their name. Many other states have allowed qualified parties to change their name, but in most states, there is no law on that subject, and election officials issue administrative rulings on that question when it arises.
On May 29, the Canadian province of Alberta held a provincial election. Here is the wikipedia page. The United Conservative Party won 60 seats; the New Democratic Party won 23 seats; two independents were elected; two seats are still vacant.
In the last election, in 2019, the two major parties of Alberta won all the seats.
The page will eventually be updated to include the share of the popular vote for each party that contested the election. The party that had the third most nominees was the Green Party, with 41 candidates out of the 87 seats.