On July 15, the North Carolina Administrtive Law Judge refused to reconsider her earlier opinion that excused Al Pisano from a campaign finance fine. Pisano was the Constitution Party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2020. See the order here.
6
This year, the Libertarian Party was the only group in Illinois that filed a ballot access petition for statewide office. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have visited the State Board of Elections office to obtain a copy of the Libertarian petition. If no one challenges the petition, the Libertarian Party is on the ballot for its statewide nominees, because Illinois election officials don’t validate petitions in the absence of a challenge.
The deadline for challenges is the end of the day, Monday, July 18.
The purpose of looking at the petition is for potential challengers to decide whether to go ahead with a challenge. There is always a little bit of motivation for Republicans to challenge Libertarian petitions. This year there may be some motivation for the Democratic Party as well, because the Libertarian nominee for Secretary of State is Jesse White. The Libertarian Jesse White happens to have the same name as the outgoing Secretary of State, Jesse White, who is a Democrat and who has always been very popular in Illinois, always winning with over 60% of the vote ever since his first election. The Democratic Secretary of State is retiring, so assuming the Libertarians appear on the ballot, the only Jesse White on the statewide ballot will be Libertarian Jesse White.
On July 15, the Kentucky State Board of Elections released new registration data, which it does every month. For the first time, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. Here is a link to the totals. There are 1,612,060 Republicans, and 1,609,569 Democrats.
The percentages are: Republican 45.19%; Democratic 45.12%; Libertarian .42%; Green .06%; Constitution .03%; Socialist Workers .01%; Reform .004%; independent and other 9.16%.
On October 10, 2020, the percentages were: Democratic 46.91%; Republican 44.00%; Libertarian .38%; Green .05%; Constitution .03%; Socialist Workers .01%; Reform .004%; independent and other 8.63%.
Counterpunch has this very extensive and detailed account of Democratic Party attempts to limit voter choice on general elections, during this century.
The article is very interesting, but also lengthy. If Hawkins had wished, the article could have been made even longer if he had chosen to include instances from the 20th century, from 1936, 1940, 1948, 1976, and 1980.
On November 8, 2022, Seattle voters will be asked to choose ranked choice voting, approval voting, or neither, for elections for city office. Approval voting is on the ballot due to an initiative. On July 14, the city council voted to add ranked choice voting.
Both proposals only apply to the city’s non-partisan primary. Neither would apply to its general elections, which would only contain two candidates per office.