On April 25, a Kansas state trial court issued a 209-page opinion in Rivera v Schwab, 2022-cv-89, 29th judicial district, Wyandotte County District Court. It finds that the new U.S. House boundaries violate the Kansas Constitution, because they were drawn for partisan advantage and they also diminish the voting power of Black voters.
Here is a newspaper story about the ruling.
On April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Libertarian Party of Alabama v Merrill, 21-1288. This is the case over the Alabama law that gives the list of registered voters free to qualified parties, but charges an unqualified party that is petitioning $37,000 to get the list.
In 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court had summarily affirmed a U.S. District Court decision that said just the opposite. This is one more example of the Court back-tracking on its older favorable precedents. It also continues an unbroken 31-year habit of rejecting all election law cert petitions filed by a minor party or an independent candidate.
Law Professor Derek T. Muller has submitted this amicus curiae brief in Cawthorn v Amalfi, the Fourth Circuit lawsuit over whether Congressman Madison Cawthorn meets the qualifications to run for Congress. The brief argues that states may have no role whatsoever in determining whether congressional candidates are qualified. However, the brief says states may adjudicate qualifications for presidential candidates.
No Democrat will be on the ballot for U.S. House from South Dakota this year. See this story. Democrats didn’t run for the seat in 2020, either. In 2020, in a two-person race, the Libertarian nominee for U.S. House, Randy Luallin, polled 75,748 votes, 19.04%. Libertarians in South Dakota nominated by convention on April 23, and nominated Collin Duprel for U.S. House. The party has nominees for eleven federal and state offices.
The California Secretary of State regularly issues a document called “Report of Registration”, which shows how many registered voters there are in each party. The document always includes the name and contact information for the chair of each qualified party, and also the chair of parties that are trying to qualify.
The latest Report of Registration, for March 2022, was initially released to show that Markham Robinson is state chair of the American Independent Party, but he died in 2021. The Secretary of State has now revised the Report to show no state chair for the American Independent Party. It only shows the address of the party’s website, which has not been altered for two years. See the Secretary of State’s list of party officers here.
It is the duty of the Secretary of State to determine the party officers of each qualified party, and no Secretary of State of California has previously refused to do that. In 2008 then-Secretary Debra Bowen determined who the party officers were, at a time when there was a dispute over the identity of the party state officers.
