Ballot Access News

On September 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit, held oral arguments in Barr v Galvin, the Massachusetts case over whether unqualified parties may use stand-in presidential candidates on their petition, and then substitute the actual presidential candidate later.  The three judges were Michael Boudin, Bruce Selya, and Kenneth Ripple.  Judge Ripple is a visiting judge from Indiana.

In 2008, the Massachusetts Libertarian Party was not a ballot-qualified party, so it needed to submit a petition to be on the November 2008 ballot for president.  The party had asked the Massachusetts Secretary of State if it could use a stand-in presidential candidate on its petition, because the party wouldn’t know who its actual presidential candidate was going to be until the national convention at the end of May 2008.  Massachusetts said “Yes”.  Later, the state changed its mind and refused to list Bob Barr on the ballot.  The party sued and won in U.S. District Court in time for relief.  The state then filed its appeal.

All three judges participated in the oral argument and all three seemed very familiar with the facts in the case.  They questioned both sides about whether the case is moot, but both sides agreed that the issue is not moot because it will recur in future presidential elections.  The panel gave the impression that they believe the Massachusetts policy on whether or not presidential stand-ins are permitted is too vague to survive.

As noted earlier, on September 14, Tom Tancredo won his ballot access lawsuit, and will be on the November 2010 ballot as the Constitution Party’s nominee for Governor of Colorado.  Here is the 9-page decision.  The decision has a surprising twist.  It seems to conclude that Tancredo could not have been nominated at the Constitution Party’s state convention earlier this year, because he had been a registered Republican too close to the date of that convention.  But, Tancredo wasn’t nominated at the party’s convention.  The original nominee for Governor had resigned from the ticket and the party state committee had then replaced the original nominee with Tancredo, a process that has fewer restrictions on who can be chosen.

The decision says nothing about whether the plaintiffs (the people who tried to remove Tancredo from the ballot) filed their lawsuit too late.  Thanks to John Duffy for the link to the opinion.

On September 1, the national Voting Rights office of the American Civil Liberties Union asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Cottier v City of Martin, South Dakota, 10-335.  The original 3-judge panel in the 8th circuit had ruled that the city could use cumulative voting for its city council elections, or single-member districts, but it could not continue to use at-large elections.  Martin is a very small town with a substantial minority of American Indians.  They are dispersed throughout the city so that it isn’t practical to draw single-member districts that would make them a majority in any single district.  The city had then appealed to the full 8th circuit, and the 8th circuit had then reversed the original 3-judge panel and said the city should continue to use the same old system it has always used.