On May 27, U.S. District Court Judge David G. Campbell, a Bush Jr. appointee, refused to enjoin the 2015 Arizona law that sharply increased the number of signatures for a member of a small qualified party to get on his or her party’s primary ballot. Arizona Libertarian Party v Reagan, cv-16-1019.

The sole reason mentioned in the order is that the Libertarian Party didn’t file the case until April 12, 2016, and the primary petitions are due June 1. The order says the party should have filed the case sooner. The decision is eight pages. It mentions that the party had also asked that the number of write-ins needed to win a primary should be enjoined, but says nothing else about that separate issue. The party will ask the judge for relief on that, very soon. Arizona permits write-ins in primaries, but the 2015 bill made the same large increase in the number of write-ins that it made to the primary petitions.

In 1980 the Socialist Workers Party won a federal lawsuit against the number of write-ins needed to win an Arizona primary. That is why the Arizona law still allows members of newly-qualifying parties to win primaries with a very small number of write-ins. The case was Socialist Workers Party of Arizona v Mofford, cv-80-293, handed down July 22, 1980. But the Libertarian Party of Arizona is not a newly-qualifying party.