On July 1, U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor enjoined the new Florida law that bars anyone from contributing more than $3,000 to a committee that is trying to get a statewide initiative on the ballot. ACLU v Lee, n.d., 4:21cv-190. The order also says that the proper defendant in this case is the Florida Elections Commission, not the Secretary of State, but that didn’t affect the outcome because the plaintiffs had sued both officials.
Here is the 17-page order.
On June 29, Elizabeth Martinez and Maggie Phair, both former candidates in the Peace & Freedom Party, died. Martinez was 95 and Phair was 92.
See this New York Times obituary for Elizabeth Martinez, and this page from the Maggie Phair Institute for Democracy and Human Rights. Thanks to several readers for the links. UPDATE: see this obituary for Maggie Phair.
On June 29, California held a special election to fill the vacancy in the 18th Assembly district, which is in Alameda County. Six Democrats, one Republican, and one Socialist Workers Party candidate were on the ballot. Here are the results. Click the + that is labelled “state.” The Republican, Stephen Slauson, received 11.2%. The Socialist Workers candidate, Joel Britton, whose ballot label was “party preference: none” received 1.5%. The six Democrats received the remainder of the vote. No one received a majority, and the run-off will be between Mia Bonta and Janani Ramachandran.
In November 2020, the same district had one Republican and one Democrat on the ballot. Those results were: Democratic 87.6%; Republican 12.4%.
On June 29, the Idaho Supreme Court heard two cases that challenge the 2021 law that requires initiatives to submit the signatures of 6% of the voters in all 35 of the state’s legislative districts. The two cases are Gilmore v Denney, 48760; and Reclaim Idaho v Denney, 48784. See this story.
On June 23, the Fifth Circuit voted to rehear Harness v Hosemann, 19-60632. This case was filed in 2019 against the Mississippi law that disenfranchises ex-felons. The U.S. District Court had upheld the law, and on February 23, 2021, the Fifth Circuit had also upheld it by a vote of 3-0. But the plaintiffs asked all the full-time judges of the Fifth Circuit to rehear the case, and they agreed. The court did not release the vote. It merely said that a majority of the judges voted for the rehearing.
Here is the original Fifth Circuit decision from February 2021. It is only seven pages and says this matter had already been settled by an earlier decision of the Fifth Circuit in 1998, Cotton v Fordyce.
