On September 4, the New Mexico Forward Party filed this request for a stay of the order that denied the party ballot access for its two statewide nominees. New Mexico Forward Party v Toulouse Oliver, 1:26cv-2286. Here is the filing. If the U.S. District Court denies it, something similar will be filed with the Tenth Circuit.
On September 4, the Nebraska Supreme Court refused to invalidate the medical marijuana initiative passed by the voters in 2024. Kuehn v Evnen, S24-901. Certain state officials had tried to invalidate the law on the theory that the initiative did not have enough valid signatures. Here is the opinion.
It is quite unusual for the voters to pass an initiative and then, long after the election, someone tries to show that the initiative should never have been on the ballot. In this case, theplaintiffs (who include the Secretary of State, even though he was also the defendant) argued that some of the notaries public authenticated petition sheets even though the circulator did not actually appear in front of that notary. Also the plaintiffs pointed out that when this had been investigated, some of the notaries public pleaded the Fifth Amendment. The plaintiffs wanted to invalidate all the petition sheets that those particular notaries had worked on, but the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court that it is wrong to invalidate all the sheets.
Late on September 4, Missouri asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restore the U.S. House district boundaries drawn by the 2025 legislature. Hoskins v Van Glahn, 26A304. Here is the filing. It starts by saying, “A federal-election-administration disaster is unfolding in Missouri.” It also says, “No court in American history has ever given such an extraordinary remedy, which inflicts unprecedented chaos on Missouri.”
The brief’s main point is that the primaries were held under the 2025 districts, so it is unthinkable to have the general election using the older district boundaries.
The brief does not mention at least two instances in the past when courts did invalidate U.S. House district boundaries after the primary was over, and yet the general election was held in new districts. One was in Georgia in 1982, when a 3-judge court in Busbee v Smith struck down the boundaries on August 24, even though the primaries had been held on August 10. The solution in that case was to create a later primary in those two districts and also to delay the general election in those two districts until November 30.
The other instance was in Texas in 1996, when the primary was held on March 12 and the districts were struck down on August 6 in Vera v Bush. The solution was to hold non-partisan primaries for the altered districts in November, with a run-off general election on December 10.
The Republican Party, an intervenor in the case, filed this brief.
Both the state’s brief and the Republican brief assert that all candidates must be nominated in primaries. However, when they quote section 115.339, they don’t include the complete law. They chop off the preliminary phrase, “Except as otherwise provided in this subchapter.” New parties in Missouri nominate by convention.
Both the state’s brief and the Republican brief are contemptuous of the state’s referendum process. They sneeringly say a referendum only requires the signatures of 3.3% of the number of registered voters. The state’s brief says this nine times.
Back in January 2026, U.S. District Court Judge John Gabney ruled that Virginia must allow felons to register to vote unless they were convicted of an offense that was a “common-law felony” in 1870. The basis for this ruling was that when Virginia was readmitted to the Union, the readmission act specified that Virginia could not curtail anyone’s voting rights except for individuals who had been convicted of a “common-law” felony. The 2026 ruling determined that there are only eleven such felonies.
Since then, Virginia elections officials have prepared their own list of crimes that it believes were “common-law” felonies back in 1870. The state’s list includes 284 crimes.
On August 19, the Judge ruled that the state’s list is far too expansive, and he repeated his own ruling that there are only eleven such types of crimes. See the ruling here.
On September 4, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, issued a 49-page ruling in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v Trump, 1:26cv-11549. Earlier the same judge had issued a temporary restraining order in the same case. The ruling prevents the U.S. Postal Service with continuing its plan to refuse to deliver postal ballots unless they are bar-coded to show that that particular voter is on a federal list of voters.
