U.S. District Court Judge Cameron Currie of South Carolina will hold a hearing on Thursday, May 10, in a case filed to get the 180 Democratic and Republican candidates on the June 12 primary ballot. See this story. This case is likely to result in a good precedent. Judge Currie is a Clinton appointee. In 2006 she put the Working Families Party on the ballot. The state had tried to keep it off, on the grounds that it should have held local and state conventions in the spring of 2006, before the party had even got on the ballot.
It is kind of an odd lawsuit that includes a bunch of additional issues. It is possible that the plaintiff does not have standing, since she was not removed from the ballot; and also claims to be filed on behalf of a class that she is not a member of.
The main claim under the VRA is that South Carolina did not preclear a change in election practice:
“BASELINE: South Carolina law has never disadvantaged an innocent third party because of reasonable reliance on an election official’s mistake.” This was based on a 1954 South Carolina Supreme Court ruling.
The claim is that the posting misleading instructions on a state website led to improper filings by candidates. So its not the change to electronic filings that is being challenged, but rather whether candidates can be kept off the ballot because of bad instructions – since it was previous state policy not to do so.
There is also a claim that a party official failed to check the residency of another candidate. It is claimed that this was a change of South Carolina practice – but it sounds like a party official did not follow state law, and it ought to be taken up in state court.
Similarly, there is another claim about a filing period that was re-opened, and since this is the district of the plaintiff, it sounds like the real target of the lawsuit, to get some other candidates off the ballot.
The claims are so scattershot and nebulous that it might be better that it did not produce a precedent.
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