On October 21, the Alaska Supreme Court issued its opinion in Kohlhaas v state. The opinion is unanimous and is 57 pages. It explains why it had ruled on January 19, 2022, that the top-four initiative is constitutional. The oral argument had been on January 18, and the next day the court had said the initiative is constitutional and that it would explain later. Now it has issued its explanation.

The most interesting part of the decision is the Court’s criticism of the Maine Supreme Court’s 2017 decision that had held that ranked choice voting violates the Maine Constitution, as applied to state office. Maine still lacks ranked choice voting for state office, in general elections (but not primaries) because the Maine Supreme Court ruled that ranked choice voting conflicts with a provision of the Maine Constitution that requires plurality elections for state office.

On October 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the order of the Commonwealth Court in Republican National Committee v Chapman, 100 MAP 2022. The vote is 3-3, because there are only six justices on the court, due to the death of a justice a few weeks ago. On a tie vote, the ruling of the lower court stands.

The issue was whether county election boards may have procedures to notify a postal ballot voter that there is a problem with the ballot, and give that voter a chance to fix the problem. The Supreme Court did not write any text. Here is the order.