The Ninth Circuit website has posted the audio for the May 6 oral argument in Montana Green Party v Jacobsen, 20-35340. Listen via this link. It lasts 36 minutes. The case was filed in 2018 against the unequal distribution requirement for petitions to recognize a new party. The U.S. District Court had upheld it, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that unequal distribution requirements for statewide petitions violate “one person, one vote.”

The Montana party petition requires a certain number of signatures in each of 33 state house districts, but the number varies, even though the districts are approximately equal in population. Some districts require as few as 55 signatures; others as many as 150. No other state has such a peculiar distribution requirement.

Early on the morning of May 7, the Texas House passed a bill that makes it a felony for anyone to give anyone else an application for an absentee ballot, if the recipient had not first requested it. See this story. The bill is not yet through the legislature because the Senate version differs.

The Gotham Gazette has published my op-ed, criticizing the 2020 New York state changes to ballot access laws. See it here.