On January 20 and January 21, two pending cases in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia were transferred to a brand-new U.S. District Court Judge. The new judge is Beryl A. Howell, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on December 23, 2010. Before she was a Judge, she had been a federal prosecutor and also had been General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

The two cases are: (1) Libertarian Party v D.C. Board of Elections, which challenges the policy of the District of Columbia Board of Elections over counting write-in votes for presidential candidates who filed a declaration of write-in candidacy; (2) Nader v Federal Election Commission, which challenges the FEC’s failure to take any action at all over Ralph Nader’s complaint that the Democratic Party in 2004 had spent a great deal of money trying to keep him off the ballot and had not reported these expenses.

The write-in case had been filed on August 7, 2009, and the only action so far (besides filing briefs) was that the judge who formerly had the case had asked the U.S. Justice Department to express an opinion. The Department had declined to do so. The Nader case had been filed on June 11, 2010. Generally, when a new judge is confirmed, cases are re-assigned to the new judge, to relieve the workload on the judges who have been there a while, and to give the new judge something to work on immediately.