The Pennsylvania legislature has adjourned for the year. HB 1369, which had passed the House State Government Committee and which would have let independent voters vote in partisan primaries, failed to make any further headway.
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On December 16, the North Carolina Supreme Court again ruled that partisan gerrymandering is banned by the state constitution, which says elections shall be “free and equal.” Here is the 130-page ruling in Harper v Hall, 2022-NCSC-121. The vote was 4-3, with Democrats in the majority and Republicans in the minority.
The decision says the trial court did not do a good job of redrawing the State Senate districts, but that it did a good job on the U.S. House and state house districts. Thanks to How Appealing for the link.
Arizona has never elected an independent or minor party candidate to any statewide office, to congress, or even to the state legislature. It is one of only two states for which that is true. The only other such state is Hawaii. However, both Arizona and Hawaii elected such candidates to their territorial legislatures in the nineteenth century.
Arizona once had an independent state legislator, Sylvia Laughter, who had been elected as a Democrat but who had switched to independent status in 2003. However, when she ran for re-election as an independent in 2004, she lost to a Democrat.
On December 9, U.S. Senator Krysten Sinema switched from being a Democrat, to being an independent. On December 15 she filed an FEC notice that she intends to run for re-election as an independent in 2024.
She will need approximately 45,000 valid signatures, due in May 2024, to run for re-election as an independent. The formula is 3% of the number of registered voters who are not registered into a qualified party. The number is constantly changing and no one can know the exact requirement until spring 2024.
On December 12, the Second Circuit refused to rehear Libertarian Party of New York v State Board of Elections, 22-44, the lawsuit against the severe 2020 ballot access changes.
On December 9, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed A1819. It bans the words “Independent” and “Independence” from being part of the name of a qualified party. However, those words can still be used as ballot labels for candidates who use the independent procedure.