Ballot Access News

On May 12, the National Popular Vote Plan advocacy organization held a press conference in Washington, D.C. The primary purpose was to announce that former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson is joining the group and will actively advocate for the Plan. Thompson was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee in a special election in 1994, and re-elected to a full term in 1996. He also ran in the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, placing sixth. He is also somewhat well-known for his acting career.

On May 11, the 8th circuit heard arguments in Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger, 10-3212. The lawsuit challenges a North Dakota law that does not let parties nominate any candidates for state legislature unless approximately 10% to 15% of all the primary voters choose that particular party’s primary ballot. North Dakota has open primaries, so that any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot. But, once a voter chooses one party’s primary ballot, that voter is then unable to vote for anyone running in another party’s primary.

When open primary states hold primaries for minor parties, typically very few voters choose a minor party primary, because generally minor party primaries are uncontested, whereas major party primaries are generally contested. Here is an account of the oral argument. The three judges are Roger Wollman, a Reagan appointee from South Dakota; Kermit Bye, a Clinton appointee from North Dakota; and Bobby Sheppard, a Bush Jr. appointee from Arkansas.

On May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it has placed Dallas County v Texas Democratic Party, 10-755, on its May 26 conference. The conference will probably decide whether to hear the case. The case had also been on the March 18 conference, but the Court had not then decided whether to hear the case, nor had it rescheduled it immediately for another conference, as is customary.

The issue is whether Dallas County’s new rules concerning its vote-counting machines should have been submitted to the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department. The Texas Democratic Party doesn’t like the Dallas County vote-counting machines, because the machines have a tendency to trick some voters into voting just for a single candidate, even though the voter believes he or she has activated the straight-ticket device and has voted for all partisan office.

There are other U.S. Supreme Court election law cases that have already been through at least one conference, and for which no decision has been made by the Court on whether to hear that case. The case involving the U.S. Senate election in Illinois in 2010 is one such case (10-367 and 10-821); another is the Green Party of Connecticut case concerning discriminatory public funding (10-795).

The U.S. Supreme Court has set a May 12 conference date in Nader v Bennett, 10-1186. This is not an election law case. It concerns Ralph Nader’s ballot access case from 2004 against Arizona, but at this point the only outstanding issue is whether the lower courts in Arizona gave the proper amount of attorneys fees to Nader’s attorneys, the Bernhoft law firm of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The firm argues that the standards for calculating attorneys’ fees, in civil rights cases when the state loses, have been applied arbitrarily and that the firm is entitled to more fees than it received. Here is the cert petition.