On August 17, Congresswoman Terri Sewell, Alabama’s only Democratic member of Congress, introduced HR 4, a bill to strengthen the federal voting rights act. Here is the text. Thanks to Electionlawblog for the link.
UPDATE: see this description of the bill in The Hill.
On August 17, Byron Brown, Mayor of Buffalo, New York, filed an independent petition with approximately 3,000 signatures, which is four times the legal requirement. He hopes to be on the November ballot as the nominee of the Buffalo Party. The 2019 legislature moved the independent candidate petition from August to May, so the petition is late, but he plans to file a lawsuit against the new, early deadline. See this story. The reporters who write stories about this subject seem uninformed that early petition deadlines for independent candidates or newly-qualifying parties have been struck down in over half the states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Four times, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down early deadlines (Williams v Rhodes, Anderson v Celebrezze, Lendall v Jernigan, and Salera v Tucker).
On August 14, two California voters filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the California gubernatorial recall election rules violate the U.S. Constitution. Here is the 11-page brief in Beaber v Weber, c.d., 2:21cv-6558. Thanks to Politico for the link.
Various legal scholars have questioned the constitutionality of the California gubernatorial recall rules. See this Politico story. The second half of the story suggests that California should not have allowed any candidates to file to become the new Governor, because the state constitution says that when there is a vacancy in the office of Governor, the Lieutenant Governor becomes Governor. But, the precedent against that idea was set in the 2003 gubernatorial recall.
The problem in the first half of this article is caused by section 11381(c), which says, “No person whose recall is being sought may be a candidate to succeed himself or herself.” On the other hand, voters are still free to cast a write-in vote for Gavin Newsom, because section 11322 says write-in space should be on the ballot. The Newsom votes won’t be counted, but if there were a lawsuit involving the first problem mentioned in the Politico story, a court could order them to be counted.
According to this newspaper story, Mayor Byron Brown of Buffalo, New York, will sue to overturn the May petition deadline for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. The 2019 legislature changed that deadline; previously it had been in August. In fact, the New York independent candidate petition deadline had always been in October, September, or August, throughout the entire period 1890 through 2019. UPDATE: this story says he is petitioning, and he will submit his signatures on August 17, which would have been the deadline if the 2019 bill had not changed the deadline. FURTHER UPDATE: his partisan label will be “Buffalo Party.” See this story.
The first newspaper story erroneously says the change in the petition deadline was made in 2020. Actually it was made in early 2019, and had nothing to do with the health crisis. Nor was it part of the 2020 change that increased the statewide petition and stiffened the definition of a qualified party. Thanks to Joe Burns for the link.
