U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe was re-elected to the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma in November 2020. Normally his term would last until January 2027. But on February 28, 2022, he wrote a letter and said he will irrevocably retire from the Senate effective January 2023.

The Governor of Oklahoma then called a special election for his seat, to be held in November 2022. On April 1, an Oklahoma Republican, Stephen Jones, filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the Seventeenth Amendment does not permit any Governor to call a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate until the vacancy exists. The Seventeenth Amendment says, “When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.” The lawsuit argues that nothing prevents Senator Inhofe from revoking his letter of resignation, so the special election might be a meaningless exercise.

Here is the brief in Jones v Stitt, w.d., 5:22cv-278. Jones argues he has standing as a voter, and he also has standing because he has asked the Governor to appoint him to the vacancy if and when it occurs.

Jones already asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to stop the special election, but that court refused to hear his case. Inhofe’s future actions must have been anticipated by the Oklahoma legislature, because in 2021 it passed an election law bill specifically authorizing special elections in case of either vacancy or irrevocable resignation. Jones argues that the very language of that new law shows he is correct, because it demonstrates that a vacancy and an irrevocable resignation are different things. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the news about the lawsuit.

New Hampshire still has not drawn new U.S. House districts. The legislature passed the bill, HB 52, on March 17. Governor Chris Sununu then said he would veto it, but he has not vetoed it yet. Instead on March 22 he sent his own preferred plan to the legislature.

The petition for statewide independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, has a distribution requirement. There must be 1,500 signatures from each of the two U.S. House districts. It is impractical for anyone to circulate these petitions until the districts are settled. When they are settled, the petitioning period will have been shrunk; normally these petitions begin to circulate in January.

Courts in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, and Montana have ruled that when the normal petitioning period is shortened, states must either extend the deadline or reduce the number of signatures. All of these decisions were from U.S. District Courts, except one of the Georgia decisions and the Maryland decision was made by a U.S. Court of Appeals. A lawsuit in New Hampshire this year, based on these precedents, could potentially cut the number of signatures. There is a somewhat helpful New Hampshire precedent from 2020, when a U.S. District Court cut the number of signatures due to the Covid health crisis from 3,000 signatures to 1,950 signatures.