At 9 a.m. eastern, January 6, President Joe Biden gave a twenty-minute speech about the events of January 6, 2021, and about democracy. Here is a link, although Biden doesn’t speak until the eleven-and-one-half-minute mark. The first three minutes is blank, and then there is a speech by Vice-President Kamala Harris, followed by the President’s speech.

At the 24-minute through 26-minute marks, Biden talks about claims that the November 2020 election returns are not accurate. He points out that persons who think there was vote fraud never question any of the congressional or gubernatorial results, even though those offices were on the same ballots, cast by the same people at the same time.

Of course it would be very good if he would ever mention the treatment of voters who wish to vote for candidates who are not major party nominees, although in fairness, the speech is focused on the events of one year ago, which is a different subject.

On January 5, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court and found that Georgia’s 5% petition (of the number of registered voters) for independent candidates, and the nominees of parties that didn’t poll 20% of the vote in the last election for president or governor, is constitutional. Here is the 17-page opinion.

The decision says the requirement is not “severe”, even though the evidence in the case shows that no one has successfully overcome that requirement since 1964, when the deadline was in October and the signatures were not checked and didn’t need to be notarized, and district boundaries did not split counties. The evidence also shows that in the 21st century alone, twenty attempts have been made, all of which failed.

The decision does not explain why the requirement is not severe, other than to say that in 2020, a candidate for judicial office met the requirement. But he was running in a judicial district that has far fewer voters than a U.S. House district, and his district was comprised of five counties, so the boundary of the district did not cross county lines. Also he only needed 3,526 signatures. U.S. House petitions are approximately 25,000. The Georgia Secretary of State still has not calculated the precise requirement for 2022 in any district.

If Georgia’s law is constitutional, then a similar law in all states would be constitutional. And if every state had a law like Georgia’s, there would have been an absolute monopoly of Democratic and Republican candidates on the ballot for U.S. House in the entire nation for almost 60 years.

The decision is by Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee who was formerly Georgia’s Solicitor General. It is also signed by Judge William Pryor, a Bush Jr. appointee, and Frank Hull, a Clinton appointee. UPDATE: here is a Courthouse News Service story.

On December 30, some Georgia voters and organizations filed a federal lawsuit against the new U.S. House district boundaries. The case was filed the same day the Governor signed the bill setting up those new districts. Pendergrass v Raffensperger, n.d., 1:21cv-5339. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones, an Obama appointee.

The petitioning period for independent candidates, and the nominees of parties that didn’t poll 20% of the vote for President in the entire U.S., or Governor of Georgia, begins on January 13, 2022. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office still hasn’t calculated the number of signatures needed in the various U.S. House districts.