The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has this story about the Eleventh Circuit ruling of January 5. This story is better than most such stories, because the reporter put near the top of the story the fact that the law has existed since 1943 and no minor party candidate for U.S. House has ever been able to comply.
Why was the law passed in the 1940s?
I’m not sure if this was the reason in Georgia, but a wave of bad ballot access laws in many states was triggered by communist party candidates around that time.
1943- World WAR — purge minority parties = UN-american / dis-loyal
Newspaper stories in Georgia newspapers say that the motivation for the bill was to keep the Communist Party off the ballot. The Communist Party had been on in Georgia for president, but nothing else, in 1928 and 1932. For some reason it wasn’t on in 1936. In 1940 it did all the paperwork to be on, but the state still refused to put it on the ballot, and the party did not sue.
Darcy Richardson was a witness in the lawsuit because he found that evidence. The state tried to disqualify his evidence. The matter was never resolved.