On August 2, U.S. District Court Judge Gregg Costa, an Obama appointee, enjoined five Texas laws that restrict groups and individuals that work in voter registration drives. The case is Voting for America v Andrade, southern district, cv-G-12-44. Here is the 94-page opinion.

The laws that were enjoined are: (1) no one can work in voter registration drives who doesn’t live in Texas; (2) no one can work outside one particular county; (2) payment to registration drive workers must be an hourly wage and compensation cannot be based on the worker’s productivity; (4) no completed voter registration forms can be photocopied by the registration drive workers or the registration drive organization; (5) all completed voter registration drives must be delivered to county elections officials in person, and they may not be mailed in.

The plaintiffs do not pay workers on a per-registration basis card basis, so they did not challenge the ban on paying on a per-registration card basis. But they did challenge the related law that says compensation cannot be based on the worker’s performance, and that part of the ban was enjoined. The plaintiff organizations want to be able to fire workers who do not do very much work.

The basis for the first three points is the First Amendment; the basis for the latter two points is that the Texas law conflicts with the federal law on voter registration forms, commonly known as the “motor-voter” law passed in 1993. Thanks to Chad Dunn for the link.

Coconino County, Arizona, Superior Court Judge Joe Lodge is a declared write-in candidate in the Libertarian primary, running for re-election. He was originally elected as a Democrat some years ago. His attempt to run for re-election as a Democrat this year was thwarted when his declaration of candidacy to run in the Democratic primary was ruled invalid, because he forgot to specify which seat he was seeking.

He then filed as a write-in candidate in the Libertarian primary. But now his Democrat opponent has filed a lawsuit, saying he can’t be a candidate in the Libertarian Party primary because he tried and failed to get on the Democratic Party ballot. The new lawsuit seems illogical. Judge Lodge isn’t a “sore loser” because he didn’t lose the Democratic primary; he failed to run. Arizona does have a law that says a candidate who attempts to petition and has a petition failure can not then run as a write-in, but that law logically cannot apply because he isn’t running in the Democratic primary as a write-in; he has entered an entirely new race, the race for the Libertarian nomination. See this story.

Marilyn Marks is an activist concerned about the accuracy of vote-counting machines. She has been fighting for years to force the city of Aspen, Colorado, to let her see ballots from recent city elections. Even though she did win that fight earlier around the 2009 ballots, and even though she won on the merits, she is still being blocked from seeing the 2011 ballots, according to this story. The legislature this year changed the state Open Records law to include old ballots. Of course, when she or anyone looks at old ballots, there is no way for the viewer to know which voter cast which ballot. Examining the ballots enables a hand re-count to be conducted.