The November 8 election resulted in the Democratic Party winning control of both houses of the Minnesota legislature. For some time the Democrats have had a majority in the House but not in the Senate.

Governor Tim Walz is a Democrat. Now that Democrats can pass their favored legislation, it is somewhat likely that a bill will be passed to give parties, or at least small qualified parties, more control over their nominations process. Both the Legal Marijuana Now Party and the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party must nominate by primary. There is no registration by party in Minnesota, so any person can enter any party’s primary merely by paying a filing fee.

For the past two elections, Republicans have entered candidates in the primaries of those two parties for insincere reasons. They don’t care about drug legalization but they perceive that most voters who vote for the two pro-marijuana parties would vote Democratic in the absence of a third party choice. They seize the nomination of one of the two minor parties hoping to affect the general election vote. The two minor parties themselves are upset by this behavior, but have been powerless to do anything about it. But the election law might be changed in 2023 to let them have more control over their primaries.

The Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party is no longer a qualified party, but the Legal Marijuana Now Party is. Neither party got 5% for any statewide race on November 8, 2022. But the Legal Marijuana Now Party got over 5% for U.S. Senate in 2020, so it is still on the ballot.

Now that Democrats can enact their agenda, though, marijuana is likely to become legal in 2023, and the entire rationale for the continued existence of the Legal Marijuana Party will diminish.

Seattle voters have rejected Approval Voting, for city council elections. Ranked Choice Voting may or may not have passed; not enough votes have been counted to know. Both were on the ballot yesterday. Approval Voting was an initiative, and the city council put the ranked choice alternate on the ballot. Thanks to Darryl Perry for this news.

Nevada’s Question Three, a system in which parties would no longer have nominees, except for president, has 51.52% of the vote, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s website as of Wednesday morning. But many ballots have not yet been counted.

Assuming Question Three passes, it can’t take effect unless the voters approve it again in November 2024. Nevada has a unique provision that requires state constitutional amendments to pass two elections in a row before they can pass.