On May 4, Kevin W. Goering died unexpectedly at the age of 64. He was the attorney for the Working Families Party in the ballot access cases that challenge the new definition of “political party”, and the new number of signatures for statewide candidates of 45,000. The Working Families, SAM, Libertarian and Green Parties are all suing over those 2020 laws.

Due to Mr. Goering’s death, the Working Families Party case is on pause for 90 days, and the other two cases are paused for at least 30 days. Goering had been hospitalized late in April 2021. He was a specialist in First Amendment cases.

On May 14, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the statewide initiative process can’t be used any longer, unless or until the legislature passes a bill reinstating it. The initiative process is in the State Constitution. Here is the decision in Butler v Watson, 2020-IA-01199.

The decision is 28 pages and the dissents are somewhat longer.

Ever since 1992, the Mississippi Constitution has provided for the initiative but has said that no more than one-fifth of the signatures can come from a single U.S. House district. Back in 1992, there were five districts, but after the 2000 census, Mississippi went from five to four districts. The election code still has the boundaries for the five districts that were passed in 1991. The current boundaries, for only four districts, were drawn by a U.S. District Court because the legislature never bothered to draw new boundaries. Until now, the state has recognized initiative petitions if they followed the statutory boundaries of the old five districts, and several initiatives won at the ballot box even though they had submitted petitions based on the five-district plan. Those initiatives have not been invalidated.

But, the new decision says that the medical marijuana initiative passed in November 2020 is invalid, because its petition was invalid, because it was based on the “shadow” five-district map. The majority decision says that the problem could be fixed if the legislature passed a law saying for purposes of the initiative process, the five-district boundaries should be used.

On May 13, the Texas legislature passed SB 2093. It revises the 2019 law that says persons seeking the nomination of a party that uses conventions must pay a filing fee. The 2019 law was so badly worded, the Texas state courts did not allow it to be enforced in 2020. The 2021 bill thus re-imposes the 2019 policy, but in a manner that is clearer. Persons who want a convention nomination must have paid a fee before being considered by the convention. This is a unique law in the nation. Many other states in which primary candidates pay a fee do not impose fees on persons nominated in convention. And even in the states that do require fees for persons nominated in a convention, such as Georgia, only the convention nominees must pay the fee, not persons who are merely seeing a convention nomination. Thanks to Jim Riley for this news.