On August 14, the North Carolina State Elections Board filed this 15-page brief in Poindexter v Strach, e.d., 5:18cv-366. This is the case over whether three particular Constitution Party nominees should be on the November ballot. All three had run in Democratic or Republican primaries in May, and had lost. Then the Constitution Party nominated them at its state convention.

After they were nominated, the legislature passed a law, saying candidates who had run and lost in a partisan primary could not later be nominated by a new party that nominates by convention. The party then filed a federal lawsuit against that law. The state’s brief appears to be have been written before the August 13 decision of a state court, which said that another election law that had been passed after someone had qualified for the ballot (the ban on party labels for judicial candidates who had switched parties in the last three months) could not be enforced.