Ballot Access News

On November 22, Joe Miller, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alaska, filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging problems with the state’s vote count in his race.  He filed in state court after the federal judge in his federal case said the case belongs in state court.

The first procedural dispute is which state court should hear the case.  Miller filed in Fairbanks, but the state wants it transferred to Juneau, where all the vote-counters reside and have been working.  The second procedural dispute is how quickly the case should be heard.  Incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski filed a request to intervene in the lawsuit, and raised the issue that the case needs to be settled quickly.  Then, on November 26, Miller filed a brief arguing that Murkowski should not be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit.  See this story.  The case is Miller v Lieutenant Governor, 4FA-10-03151.

On November 3, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the state of Illinois to respond to the lawsuit filed by U.S. Senator Roland Burris.  The case is Judge v Quinn, 10-367.  The issue was how candidates could qualify to get on the ballot in the special election for U.S. Senate, two-month term, that was held on November 2, 2010.

The lower courts had ordered that Illinois simply print on the ballot the names of people who had qualified in the U.S. Senate race for the full term, on the ballot as the candidates for the short term.  U.S. Senator Roland Burris was not running for the full term, but he wanted to run for the short term.  But the lower courts left him no possibility of qualifying to run for the short term.

Illinois’ response is due December 3, 2010.  If the U.S. Supreme Court does hear this case, it would have no effect on this particular Illinois Senate election, but it would set rules for future special elections.

As of November 6, when most of the votes had been counted in the November 2 election, the District of Columbia returns showed that the Republican nominee for Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives had only polled 7,401 votes.  The D.C. election law requires parties to poll at least 7,500 votes in order to remain on the ballot, and the “shadow U.S. Senate” and “shadow U.S. Representative” elections don’t count.  Because the Republicans had not run for any other partisan race in D.C. in 2010, it appeared that the party had gone off the ballot.

But then, on November 6, the D.C. Board of Elections had re-interpreted the election law to say that a party only needs to meet the vote test every four years.  This saved the Republican Party’s ballot status, because it had met the vote test for President in 2008.

Now, it turns out that the Republican Party in 2010 did meet the vote test for its nominee for Delegate to the U.S. House.  That nominee, Missy Reilly Smith, polled 8,109 votes, when all the absentee and provisional votes were counted.