On November 8, U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers, a Bush Jr. appointee, struck down a Florida law making it a crime for a candidate for non-partisan office to “campaign” based on party affiliation. The plaintiff, a candidate for School Board, had been fined for saying he was a “lifelong Republican.” Hetherington v Madden, n.d., 3:21cv-671. Here is the 31-page opinion. Thanks to the Institute for Free Speech for the news.
Usually ranked choice voting boosts the vote for minor party candidates. That was true in Maine in both 2020 and 2022. But in Alaska in 2022, it didn’t seem to help minor parties.
The only minor party candidate for a statewide office who survived the top-four primary was Chris Bye, Libertarian for U.S. House. He had placed fifth in the primary, and thus did not originally qualify for the November ballot. But when one of the candidates who had qualified dropped out, Bye advanced. However, in the general election, he got 1.73% of the first choice votes.
In the past, Libertarians running for U.S. House in Alaska have recently done far better than that. These are the percentages for the Libertarian for U.S. House in all past Alaska elections: 2000 1.76%; 2002 1.67%; 2004 2.39%; 2006 1.72%; 2012 5.20%; 2014 7.65%; 2016 10.35%. In all these instances, both major parties had a candidate.
The Alaskan Independence Party candidates for statewide offices were all kept off the general election ballot, due to failing to place high enough in the primary. They had tried in the gubernatorial race and the U.S. Senate race. Libertarians were also kept off the ballot in all the statewide races other than U.S. House.
In the legislative races, there were no races with more than four candidates filing for the primary, so the top-four system didn’t have any restrictive effect. In the general election for legislature, when ranked choice voting was in existence, there was no legislative race with a minor party candidate in which the winner received less than 50% with first place votes, so no second choice votes were counted.
At the November 8 election, Alaska Independence Party member Tyler Ivanoff received 48.17% of the vote in a two-person race. His opponent, Neal Foster, is a Democrat and the incumbent. See this story about the race. It reveals that when Ivanoff filed for office, he intended to file as an independent candidate, but mistakenly registered as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, so his label was AIP.
The California Secretary of State’s website shows how many ballots are still uncounted. See this link. As of the weekend of November 19-20, there are still 1,033,000 uncounted ballots.
The December 1 2022 printed Ballot Access News will be published a little later than normal, so as to be as comprehensive as possible for its election returns coverage.
At the November 8, 2022 election, Nevada voters passed Question Three, the top-five initiative, with 52.5% of the vote. It does not go into effect unless the voters pass it again in November 2024.
If it had been in effect in 2022, it is almost certain that no minor party candidates would have been on the November ballot for either Governor or U.S. Senator. At the 2022 primaries, there were ten major party candidates for Governor, and twelve for U.S. Senator. Based on what has happened in California 2012-2022, and Washington 2008-2022, the only choices for those two offices in November 2022 would have been five major party members for each office.
