On May 17, the U.S. Supreme Court said it won’t hear the Mississippi ballot access case, Moore v Hosemann, 09-982. Two other ballot access cert petitions are still pending, one from Alabama, and one from Louisiana.

The original issue in the Mississippi case was whether Brian Moore, Socialist Party presidential candidate, should have been on the November 2008 ballot. His presidential elector paperwork had been submitted ten minutes past 5 p.m. The chances of this case being heard in the U.S. Supreme Court were probably diminished when the Mississippi legislature this year passed a bill, saying such paperwork is due at 5 p.m. (previously, the law set a date for the deadline, but not a time).

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that ballot access lawsuits are not moot just because the election is over. But this case had a different type of mootness problem. This year, after Moore had filed his brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, the legislature had fixed the law that had been complained about. The Court had never before taken any election law case in which the legislature had already fixed the problem complained about while the case was pending.