This story describes how a city initiative in Springfield, Missouri, to reform the penalty for marijuana possession gathered enough valid signatures to be on the ballot. Then the city council itself passed the same measure, which removed it from the ballot. Then, after it was too late for the popular vote this year, the same city council repealed the measure. Further legal action is expected.
On September 20, a Maine Superior Court ruled that Ralph Nader’s lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and some of its allies may proceed to a jury trial. The trial is many months away, and will be proceeded by discovery. This means that Nader’s attorneys will be able to take depositions from witnesses and defendants and learn previously unknown information about “the ballot project”, the 2004 Democratic Party plan to keep Nader off the ballot in as many states as possible. The case is Nader v The Maine Democratic Party, Washington County, Maine, macsc-cv-2009-57.
This trial is only possible because Maine has a six-year statute of limitations. The 15-page order says, “This Court is satisfied…that Plaintiffs have made a prima facie showing of both a civil conspiracy, including an ulterior motive, and the improper use of discovery and subpoenas to establish an abuse of process claim.” Here is a brief newspaper story about the order. Here is a press release from Ralph Nader’s attorneys.
Credico v New York State Board of Elections will be argued in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on November 1 at 2 pm. This is the case filed almost two years ago, over whether a candidate nominated by two unqualified parties can be listed twice on the ballot, or whether the candidate can only be listed once.
The case began when both the Libertarian Party, and the Anti-Prohibition Party, nominated Randy Credico for U.S. Senate in 2010. Even though New York state election law lets a candidate be listed on the general election ballot when he or she was nominated by two qualified parties, and also lets a candidate be listed twice on the ballot when nominated by one qualified party and one nonqualified party, the state won’t permit a candidate to be listed twice if he was nominated by two unqualified parties.
On September 25, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ten-page opinion in Tennant v Jefferson County Commission, 11-1184, a congressional redistricting case from West Virginia. The Court ruled that population deviations between U.S. House districts of up to eight-tenths of 1% are constitutionally permissible, if the plan has certain practical advantages, such as not splitting counties and making the fewest changes to the old map.
The Court had already stayed the opinion of the 3-judge U.S. District Court that had invalidated the districts that had the .8% population deviation, so the decision is no surprise. The Court wrote the opinion without holding an oral argument in the matter. The Court hasn’t reconvened yet from its summer recess, but did issue this one opinion before convening. Also on September 25, the Court accepted six cert petitions, but none of them are election law cases or high-profile cases on such topics as same-sex marriage. Two of the cert petitions were filed by pro se litigants; see this story. “Pro se” means the individual who filed the case is not an attorney and is representing himself. Thanks to How Appealing for the link.
This San Francisco Chronicle article takes advantage of the fact that both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein happen to be campaigning this week in the area, and the reporter interviewed both of them.
