On November 4, the Secretary of State of Florida granted recognition to the No Labels Party. Therefore, in 2024, it is free to run nominees for any partisan office, except for the only office for which the party is interested, President.

Even though No Labels Party is qualified, it isn’t recognized by the Federal Elections Commission, so under a law passed in 2011, it can’t be on for President unless it submits a petition of 145,040 signatures. The petition need not carry the name of the presidential candidate. It is believed that No Labels is circulating this petition.

The 2011 law is probably unconstitutional. The FEC does not grant national committee recognition based on voter support for the party. It grants it to any party that has already run nominees for president and congress in several states. The FEC will never grant national committee recognition to a new party. Therefore, the law discriminates against new parties, relative to old ones. In 2011 the Florida Secretary of State issued a ruling saying he would not apply the law, because he had no official knowledge of which parties are recoognized by the FEC. But in September 2016, another Florida Secretary of State reversed that ruling and did enforce the law, which kept Evan McMullin off the ballot as the Independent Party nominee. McMullin did not fight that reversal in court. In 2020 the Secretary of State did not enforce the law and put the presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism & Liberation on the ballot, even though it wasn’t recognized by the FEC and did not petition.

The Georgia Democratic Party is currently suing the Georgia Secretary of State over whether early voting should be permitted on Saturday, November 26, for the U.S. Senate runoff. The law says no early voting is permitted on a Saturday that is one or two days after a holiday, but the Democratic Party argues that law doesn’t apply to run-offs. The Democratic Party points out that in the last U.S. Senate run-offs, in January 2021, the state permitted early voting on Saturday, December 26.

The national Republican Party has intervened in the case. The case is Democratic Party of Georgia v State, Superior Court, Fulton County, 2022-cv-372734. Here is the Republican National Committee brief, filed November 17.

Here is the Democratic Party response. Thanks to Democracy Docket for the links.

On November 8, voters in seven localities passed ballot measures to use ranked choice voting. Notably, in two of those jurisdictions, the measure calls for single transferable vote, which is a form of proportional representation. Those two places were Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine.

The other localities were: (1) Seattle, Washington; (2) Multnomah County, Oregon, for county office; (3) Evanston, Illinois; (4) Fort Collins, Colorado; (5) Ojai, California. Evanston is the first city in Illinois to adopt ranked choice voting.