On February 29, the Utah State Senate defeated HB 290. It had passed the House, and it would have ended the pilot program that lets a certain number of cities use Ranked Choice Voting for their own elections.
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The Hill has this interview with Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, about the presidential election.
On March 6, the Indiana Supreme Court released its opinion in Morales v Rust, 23S-PL-371, the lawsuit over the requirements to get on a primary ballot. The law requires candidates to have voted in each of that party’s two previous primaries, although the party can grant a waiver.
The Court had already let it be known on February 27 that the law had been upheld, but it didn’t release its opinion until March 6. Here it is. The vote was 3-2, something that had not been known back on February 27.
The opinion of two justices, upholding the law, is 41 pages. A concurrence by a third justice is 18 pages. The dissent is 25 pages.
On March 6, two New York Times reporters who cover politics, Shane Goldmacher and Adam Nagourney, wrote “One clear loser in California’s primary: the top-two nonpartisan primary system. They say, “It was sold on good government reform, meant to drain partisanship and promote centrist politicians. Instead, it showed itself – again – to be as vulnerable as traditional primaries to partisan gamesmanship.” See this link, although it may be behind a paywall. It is at the end of the column, the title of which is “Five Takeaways from Super Tuesday.”
Texas is the only state that won’t let people sign petitions for newly-qualifying parties or independent candidates if they voted in the primaries. The Texas primaries for all office were on Tuesday, March 5. Although not all votes have been counted, it appears that only about 3,300,000 people voted in either the Democratic or Republican primaries.
By contrast, in the 2020 presidential primaries, approximately 4,200,000 Texans voted. In 2016, approximately 4,300,000 Texans voted. So ballot access this year will be somewhat easier than in 2020 and 2016. The only two petitions likely to come close to succeeding in Texas are petitions to create the No Labels Party and the Texas Independent Party. The Texas Independent Party backs Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Each petition needs 81,030 signatures. Petitioning cannot begin until March 12, and the deadline is May 28.
The Libertarian and Green Parties are ballot-qualified in Texas.