On Tuesday, November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear U.S. v Vaello-Madero, 20-303. This is not an election law case, but the eventural decision might have implications for election law. The issue is the federal law that grants Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to U.S. citizens living in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Northern Mariana Islands, but not to U.S. citizens living in any other U.S. territories. SSI is federal welfare for aged and disabled persons.

The First Circuit had struck down the law. Here is the brief of the U.S. government in defense of the law. Thanks to How Appealing blog for the news about the upcoming argument.

On November 5, the Maine Libertarian Party submitted a new piece of evidence in its pending ballot access case, Baines v Bellows, 1:19cv-509. The case concerns several ballot access problems for new and small political parties in Maine. One of the issues is whether the state has any justification to forcibly convert all party members to independent voter status when a party loses its qualified status, without consulting those voters.

The new evidence is a sample letter that New Mexico election officials send to all voters registered into a party that has just lost its ballot qualification. New Mexico, like most states that have registration by party, does not revoke the party registration for members of parties, when that party loses its qualified status. Instead, as the evidence shows, New Mexico sends a letter to all such voters, telling them that their party is no longer qualified, just in case they might want to change party. But the letter makes it clear that the voter need not do anything, and that the voter will remain a member of that party, qualified or not, unless the voter decides to make a change.

The point of this evidence is to show that Maine could have the same tolerant policy, without any election-administration problem, if it wanted to.

On the evening of November 5, the U.S. House passed the infrastructure bill that had already passed the U.S. Senate months ago. Thirteen Republicans in the House voted for the bill, bucking their party’s leadership. They are Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Gabarino of New York, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, John Katko of New York, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, David McKinley of West Virginia, Tom Reed of New York, Chris Smith of New Jersey, Fred Upton of Michigan, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, and Don Young of Alaska.

There are fourteen Republicans in the U.S. House from top-two states (Washington and California). There are also five Republicans in the U.S. House from Louisiana, a state in which (like the top-two states) there are no party nominees. Over and over, we are told that partisan primaries are the evil that causes polarization. Yet none of the 19 Republicans from the states without partisan congressional primaries voted for the Infrastructure bill.

Opponents of party primaries ought to take note.