On August 10, Rebekah Jones, a Democrat running for U.S. House in Florida’s First District, filed an appeal in her ballot access case. The lower state court kept her off the primary ballot because it believed that while she was in Maryland last year, she registered as an independent. She disputes that. The Florida law, requiring candidates to have been a member of a party for one full year before filing, is being used to keep her off.

Technically her name is on the primary ballot, but the lower court ordered that votes for her should not be counted.

There is a Kentucky precedent that duration of membership laws only apply to records from the state in which the candidate is running, not the records of other states. It is not known if Jones’ attorneys are aware of that Kentucky precedent, which is Ball v Whitfield, May 13, 1994, Christian Circuit Court, 94-CI-00315. In that case, Republican U.S. House candidate Ed Whitfield had been a registered Democrat in Florida in the recent past, but when he moved to Kentucky, he registered as a Republican and wanted to run in the Kentucky Republican primary. His ballot status was challenged, but the court ruled that the duration of party membership law only applies to registration inside the state in which the candidate seeks to run. Whitfield then went on to be elected to Congress from Kentucky.