On August 19, some Missouri voters sued the Secretary of State, arguing that he should not have placed the marijuana legalization initiative on the ballot. See this story.
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On August 19, a Florida state appeals court put Jerry Torres back on the Republican primary ballot as a candidate for U.S. House, 14th district. He had earlier been removed because Democrats challenged his declaration of candidacy. It was notarized by a Mississippi judge while Torres was in Africa. The state appeals court ruled that the challengers lack standing. See this story. Torres v Shaw, 1D22-2423. Here is the opinion.
The Florida primary is August 23. Technically, the lower court had ruled that votes for Torres should not be counted. It had been too late to remove him from the ballot, because the ballots are already printed.
Still pending is a case on whether Rebekah Jones should be on the Democratic primary ballot for U.S. House, District One.
D. Reed Eckhardt, an award-winning writer, has this op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican, marshalling evidence that eliminating party nominees does not help elect more moderate candidates. Thanks to Linda Templin for the link.
On August 19, the Secretary of State of Georgia informed the Eleventh Circuit that he wishes to withdraw his request to reinstate Public Service Commissioner elections for the November 2022 ballot. The Eleventh Circuit approved his request. Therefore, the two races for Public Service Commission won’t be on the November 2022 ballot, even though the state already let the Democratic and Republican Parties nominate for this office in their 2022 primaries, and even though the Libertarian Party nominating convention had also nominated someone for one race.
The incumbent Commissioners will now serve additional time, even though their terms had been expiring.
The case is still alive, and future proceedings will determine whether the at-large elections violate the federal Voting Rights Act. But it seems likely that the U.S. District Court will rule in favor of district elections.
This event highlights the irrationality of the Georgia ballot access law relating to minor parties. When the office was elected statewide, the Libertarian Party was allowed to have its nominees on the November ballot with no petition. But assuming that in the future, this office will be elected on a district basis, any Libertarian who wants to run (or the nominee of any other third party) will need about 70,000 signatures. Yet the duties of the office have not changed. Perhaps this ludicrous aspect of Georgia ballot access law can be mentioned in the U.S. Supreme Court pleadings in Cowen v Rafflesperger, the Libertarian pending ballot access case. 22-101.
On August 19, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins should be on the ballot for re-election. Deal v Perkins. Here is the Opinion. The issue is whether the penalty for making clerical errors on candidacy declaration forms is to be blocked from the ballot or not.
The decision is based on statutory construction.