In November 2020, Alaska voters passed Measure Two, which created a top-four system, and also require individuals who make independent expenditures in campaigns for state and local office to make their contributions public. On April 7, a federal lawsuit was filed against the campaign spending part of the initiative. Smith v Helzer, 3:22cv-77. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court judge Shannon Gleason, an Obama appointee. Here is the Complaint.
On April 7, Hawaii Governor David Ige signed HB 1471, which slightly eases the petitioning procedure for newly-qualifying parties. The old law has a column on the petition for the signers to show their entire birthdate. The bill deletes the “year” column, so in the future, signers will only need to show the month and date of their birthday.
This is the second ballot access improvement bill that has been signed into law this year. The first was the Oregon bill, easing the registration requirement for a party to remain ballot-qualified.
Three candidates have withdrawn from the June 2022 Alaska primary for U.S. House, special election. Therefore, there are now 48 candidates on the ballot instead of 51: 21 independents, 16 Republicans, 6 Democrats, 3 Libertarians, and one each from the Alaskan Independence Party and the American Independent Party. UPDATE: Ted S. Heintz, who had filed as a Libertarian, and who is a registered Libertarian, has exercised his option to be listed as “nonpartisan” on the ballot. Therefore, from the viewpoint of what the ballot shows, there are now 22 independents and two Libertarians in the race.
On April 8, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in Mecinas v Hobbs, 20-16301. This is the lawsuit filed in 2020 by the Democratic National Committee against the Arizona law that determines the order of candidates on general election ballots. The law says the party that carried that county for Governor in the last gubernatorial election will have all its nominees listed first. The U.S. District Court had ruled that the plaintiffs lack standing, and that even if they do have standing, cases on ballot order cannot be adjudicated because they are “political”.
The Ninth Circuit rejected all the procedural objections to the lawsuit. The opinion says ballot-order cases can be adjudicated, and points out that in 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court itself summarily affirmed a 3-judge court decision from Illinois that invalidated the Illinois procedures for determining the order of candidates. The Ninth Circuit did not decide the merits, but it hinted that the law is unconstitutional. The opinion says, at the end, “Given that Arizona’s asserted interest in a manageable ballot could seemingly be effectuated through a nondiscriminatory ordering system, ‘judgment in the Secretary’s favor is premature’ at this juncture.”
The decision is by visiting U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, who is a judge in New York and who is a Clinton appointee. It is also signed by Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson, a Clinton appointee; and Judge Paul J. Watford, an Obama appointee.
This is the first victory that the Democratic Party has had in its six ballot-order cases filed in 2020. It lost its Florida and Georgia cases because the Eleventh Circuit said that ballot-order cases can’t be adjudicated because it is impossible to come up with a fair system. This is an absurd conclusion; it is easy to design a non-discriminatory system. Either the names of candidates can be rotated from one area to the next, or the state can hold a random drawing to determine which candidate should be listed first.
If Arizona appeals this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, that court seems likely to hear the case, because that court generally accepts election law cert petitions from state governments, especially when there is a Circuit split, which there is in this case. Thanks to Steve Kemp for the news.
UPDATE: here is a newspaper story about the ruling.
On April 8, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Helen Adams issued a ten-page opinion in Libertarian Party of Iowa v Pate, s.d., 4:19cv-241. She had issued a text order on March 31, saying the March petition deadline for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties is unconstitutional, and that an opinion explaining that would be issued soon. She has now issued it.
The deadline was in August, until 2019, when the legislature moved it to March for all office except president. The opinion says that there was no problem for election administration back when the deadline was in August, and that the deadline harms unqualified parties by forcing them to have chosen all their non-presidential nominees by March, whereas the qualified parties don’t choose their nominees until the June primary.
