The oldest election law case is Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service, which was filed in 2000 and is still in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The case concerns the constitutionality of a postal regulation making it illegal for petition circulators to be on interior post office sidewalks. Several months ago, the Judge arranged for the Postal Service to do a large random sample of postmasters, to see whether postmasters have noticed people petitioning, handing out leaflets, and engaged in other First Amendment activity on those sidewalks.

The survey replies are now in. There are 1,000 pages of data. A very preliminary look at them suggests that there is a lot of expressive activity on post office sidewalks. This is good for the lawsuit, because it supports the idea that post office sidewalks are a traditional public forum. However, this case is likely to take another six months before a decision is reached.