On January 2, Louisiana legislative leaders decided not to hold a special legislative session to redraw the U.S. House district boundaries. See this story. The U.S. Supreme Court still hasn’t issued its decision in Callais v Louisiana. The Republican majority in the legislature had been hoping that the Court would invalidate the old districts, and that might still happen, but there isn’t enough time to draw new districts if that happens. See this story.
On January 7, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory B. Williams ruled against No Labels in the trademark lawsuit No Labels had filed against a parody site that made it seem No Labels supported President Trump. No Labels v Delco0222024, Inc., US District Court, Delaware, 1:23cv-1384.
The decision is based on procedure. The judge found that almost all of the defendants did not have enough connection to the state of Delaware. Therefore, No Labels should have sued each of them in the in the states in which each of them resided.
The judge also found that No Labels did not have standing to sue the one defendant who did have connection to Delaware.
This is an anticlimatic end of an interesting lawsuit that was filed three years ago.
On January 7, Roberto Mondragon died at the age of 85. He was the Green Party nominee for Governor of New Mexico in 1994. Also he had been the Lieutenant Governor (elected as a Democrat) for two terms before 1994. He is one of only two Greens who ever polled more than 10% of the vote for Governor.
Mondragon polled 10.26%; Richard Whitney in 2006 polled 10.36% for Governor of Illinois. Each of them was responsible for making the Green Party a fully ballot-qualified party in each of those two states.
See this story.
On January 3, the West Virginia Republican Party state executive committee voted to exclude independent voters from its 2026 primary. The party did let independents vote in its 2024 primary. See this story.
On January 13, the California Senate Elections Committee passed SB 46. Here is the text. It requires presidential primary candidates to sign under penalty of perjury that they meet the constitutional qualifications to be president.
The bill was originally not an election law bill, but was amended with its current content on January 5. The analysis of the new language of the bill is still not posted on the California legislature’s website. The bill might violate the California Constitution, which says, “The candidates on the ballot are those found by the Secretary of State to be recognized candidates throughout the nation or throughout California.” Article II, sec. 5(c). Under that state constitutional language, presidential primary candidates are not even required to file any paperwork to be on the ballot. That part of the state constitution was used by the California Supreme Court to strike down a law that required presidential primary candidates to file a copy of their income tax returns.
