Early in the afternoon of Monday, January 3, the first Maine newspaper covered the December 31 decision concerning the Libertarian Party’s being put back on the ballot for 2022. See it here. UPDATE: here is a shorter AP story.
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A trial will be held this week in North Carolina state court, over whether the new U.S. House and legislative districts constitute an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The North Carolina Supreme Court has previously ruled that the state constitution prohibits partisan gerrymandering. See this story.
As already noted, on December 31 (Friday), U.S. District Court Judge Lance E. Walker ordered the Maine Secretary of State to put the Libertarian Party on the 2022 ballot. It has now been almost 3 days later and no general news source in Maine seems to have mentioned that news. The only media covered in “news.google” that has mentioned it is Reason Magazine. Here is the December 31 item by Law Professor Eugene Volokh for Reason.
On December 27, in response to a question, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said he supports restoring the statewide initiative process in his state. See this story. The initiative is in the State Constitution, but early in 2019 the State Supreme Court ruled that it has a fatal flaw. It requires a certain number of signatures from each of the five U.S. House districts, but due to reapportionment, Mississippi has only had four U.S. House districts since 2001.
In 2019, the Iowa legislature moved the petition deadline for non-presidential independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, form August to March. That same year, the Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit against that change.
Both sides asked for summary judgment on March 3, 2021. The magistrate judge who is handling the case has not acted, and it is virtually ten months since those briefs were filed.