On July 8, the Montana Republican County Central Committees in Yellowstone and Chouteau County filed a lawsuit in state court against the state Republican Party. The plaintiffs include a Republican legislator. The plaintiffs are fighting to overturn state party bylaws created last month. See this story.
On June 10, the California Secretary of state released the official vote returns for the June 2 primary. Butch Ware, Green Party candidate for Governor, received 22,493 write-ins. He had not been on the ballot because the Secretary of State was not satisfied with the copies of income tax returns that he had submitted.
Ware’s total was greater than the number of votes received by 49 candidates who were listed on the ballot. It was also the largest number of write-ins received in any California top-two primary by a write-in candidate.
A Public Broadcasting station in Georgia has this story about the Libertarian Party’s absence from the 2026 statewide ballot. 2026 will be the first time since 1986 that only Republicans and Democrats will appear on the Georgia ballot for statewide offices. The story says Libertarians will try to lobby for better ballot access in next year’s legislative session.
The only reason the Libertarian Party is not on the 2026 ballot is that in 2024, the normal races for Public Service Commissioner were temporarily removed from the ballot. Libertarians always get enough votes for those offices, and normally they appear on the ballot in every election. But courts cancelled those elections for 2024 while a court fight was carried on as to whether the Voting Rights Act required that the Public Service Commissioner elections be district offices instead of statewide offices. In the end, the courts allowed those elections to continue to be statewide.
States that still haven’t finished holding congressional primaries this year are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
U.S. House member Kelly Morrison (D-Minnesota) has introduced HR 9634. It would help states and localities with funding if they are switching to Ranked Choice Voting. The text is still not available on the congressional website, but when it is, this post will be amended to link to the text.
