The U.S. Supreme Court website now has a link to the transcript of the oral argument of October 5 in Carney v Adams. This is the case over the Delaware law that allows only registered Democrats and Republicans to be appointed to the three most important state courts. The transcript is 68 pages.
On Friday, October 9, a Missouri gubernatorial debate was held. All four ballot-listed candidates participated. They are the nominees of the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Green Parties. The debaters were in the same room but there was no live audience. See this story. Thanks to Ken Bush for the link.
The New York Times has this interesting story showing when each state begins to pre-process ballots that arrive before election day. “Pre-process” does not mean that the ballot is counted early. It means that the time-consuming work of checking the signature on the outer envelope is done early.
Only four states don’t do any pre-processing before election day: Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And at least Wisconsin election officials do examine the outer envelopes before election day to see if there are any obvious errors on the outer envelope, such as a missing signature.
A bill is pending in Pennsylvania to allow for pre-processing. Pennsylvania has a Republican majority in each house of its legislature but a Democratic governor. There is a great deal of attention in Pennsylvania on whether this bill passes in time to be of use. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
The Equal Time Law, passed by Congress in 1934, still exists. It has been pruned back by court decisions that say “bona fide news shows” are exempt. However, a “bona fide news show” must include more than one candidate. On October 9, Rush Limbaugh interviewed President Trump for two hours, and no other candidate was on the same show.
On October 13, Howie Hawkins, Green Party nominee, asked for equal time. The equal time law is in section 315(a).
The Alton Telegraph has this story, pointing out that almost half of Illinois legislative elections have only one candidate on the ballot. Thanks to Sam Cahnman for the link. This shows how absurd it was for Illinois Democrats to attack the U.S. District Court decision that cut the number of signatures for minor party and independent candidates to just 10% of the normal requirement, for 2020 only. Democrats tried to overturn the ruling on the basis that the ballots would be “flooded” with too many candidates.
