On April 6, the Erie County Supreme Court struck down a 2021 New York law that forbids voters in primaries from casting a write-in vote for someone who is not a member of that party. The case had been filed by voters from the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party. Kowal v Mohr, 801603/2023.

The ostensible purpose of the 2021 law was to stop “party-raiding”, in which voters who are hostile to a particular party cast insincere votes in that party’s primary, in order to injure that party. But all the available evidence suggested that rarely, if ever, happens. Thanks to Joe Burns for this news. The basis for the decision was the state constitutional protection of the right to vote.

The North Dakota House expects to vote on HB 1273 on Monday, April 10. This is the bill that bans approval voting and ranked choice voting. Governor Doug Burgum had vetoed it, and the House will vote on whether or not to override his veto.

So far this year, there have been four vetoes of any North Dakota bills, and the House has overridden two of them.

This Ohio news story refers to the No Labels petition for qualified party status in Ohio. The title says the party recently filed for party status, but actually the party submitted its petition months ago, and the counties have slowly been validating the petition. No Labels submitted more than twice the number of signatures required. The news story quotes Frank LaRose, Ohio Secretary of State, as saying the petition seems to have a slightly worse validity rate than similar petitions. If the petition-checking process still isn’t finished, it isn’t clear what triggered the news story.