The State Democracy Research Initiative at University of Wisconsin Law School will be hosting its annual review of democracy litigation in the U.S. and state supreme courts, at 3:00-4:15 CT today. It features Pam Karlan, Derek Muller, Gowri Ramachandran, and Rylee Sommers-Flanagan, with Miriam Seifter moderating. The event will be livestreamed, and you can register here.
On July 11, he RFK, Jr./Shanahan Campaign handed in its petition signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State.
UPDATE: see this story.
Presuming that the Campaign has enough valid signatures (I don’t know how many signatures were turned in, but I would be shocked if they didn’t have enough valid signatures of Colorado registered voters), this would mean that Kennedy/Shanahan would be on the ballot as an Independent ticket, and not on the Libertarian Party line in that state, because Colorado does not allow candidate fusion.
According to this story, the Illinois Supreme Court will soon decide the lawsuit Collazo v Illinois State Board of Elections. The issue is the 2024 law that eliminated the ability of qualified parties to nominate after the primary (in races in which the primary didn’t produce a party nominee).
The Illinois Supreme Court has one of the worst histories on ballot access of any court in the nation. An Illinois Supreme Court ruling kept the Harold Washington Party off the 1990 ballot, but fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it, in Norman v Reed. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the law that required newly-qualifying parties to run a full slate of candidates, but later the Seventh Circuit, a federal court, struck it down. The Illinois Supreme Court has consistently ruled against the ability of citizens to use the statewide initiative process. The Illinois Supreme Court kept Henry Wallace off the ballot for president in 1948.
On July 11, the Utah Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in League of Women Voters Utah v Utah State Legislature, 2024 UT 21. It says that the 2018 initiative, passed by voters to impose a nonpartisan redistricting process, is reinstated. Here is the opinion.
In 2020 the legislature had repealed the 2018 initiative, and thus eliminated the nonpartisan redistricting process. But the State Supreme Court interprets the Utah Constitution to say the legislature can’t do that. It is thus a huge win for the initiative process as well as the nonpartisan redistricting process. The opinion says the legislature can alter initiatives that have already passed, but only to facilitate the purpose of that initiative, not to destroy it.
The hearing had been exactly a year ago, so this was a long time coming. As a result the state’s U.S. House boundaries will probably be altered next year. Thanks to Manual Haddad for the news.
On July 10, the Eleventh Circuit refused to rehear Rose v Raffensperger, the case over whether Georgia’s at-large elections for Public Service Commission violate the federal Voting Rights Act. The vote was 8-3, with one abstention. The three judges who wanted to rehear the case wrote at length, and one of the judges who didn’t want to rehear the case also wrote.
As a result, there will continue to be at-large elections for this partisan office, instead of district elections. If the lawsuit had succeeded, the state would have had five districts, each one electing a commissioner. Here is the decision.
