On February 15, the Tennessee Senate State & Local Government passed SB 2616 by a vote of 5-1. It says that political parties cannot nominate anyone for either house of congress, if that person had not voted in Tennessee in each of the last three statewide general elections. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.
On February 15, proponents of an Illinois statewide initiative filed a lawsuit in state court, to obtain the ability to collect electronic signatures. Wagner v White, Circuit Court of Cook County, 22CH285. Here is the Complaint.
On February 15, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a lengthy opinion in Harper v Hall, 2022-NCSC-17, explaining why it had ruled on February 4 that the new U.S. House and legislative district boundaries constitute an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The majority opinion is 138 pages; the dissent is 74 pages. The vote, like the vote on February 4, is four-three. Here is the opinion. The majority is very eloquent about the harm done by partisan gerrymandering, and sets forth a prominent role for the State Constitutional provision that elections shall be “free and equal.”
The opinion may be useful in the near future when any independent candidate challenges the ballot access laws for independents. Those laws are very harsh. No independent candidate for either house of Congress has ever appeared on a government-printed ballot in North Carolina.
On February 14, both houses of the Tennessee legislature passed SB 1820, which prevents local governments from using ranked choice voting for elections for their own officers. The vote was 74-19. All Republican representatives voted for the bill. In the House, among the 26 Democrats, 6 voted “yes”, one didn’t vote, and the other nineteen voted “no.” In the Senate the vote was 26-4.
On February 14, Ohio informed the U.S. Supreme Court that it doesn’t expect to respond to the cert petition in Thompson v DeWine, 21-1120, the case over whether the state should have granted petitioning relief for initiative petitions during the Covid crisis. Of course if the Court wants Ohio to respond, it will inform the state, and then the state would respond.
