On September 22, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Republican-backed referendum petition on ranked choice voting for president did not have enough valid signatures. Therefore, the voters will not vote again on whether to use ranked choice voting, and the existing law, requiring the presidential portion of the November ballot to use ranked choice voting, will be in effect in November 2020. See this story.

The case is Jones v Dunlap, CUM-20-227. The vote is unanimous. Here is the 24-page opinion. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

The only reason the petition failed is that two of the circulators, who each collected a great many signatures, were not registered in their town of residence when they started to work on the petition. The Maine Supreme Court admits that in 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a Colorado law that required initiative petitioners to be registered voters. But it says in that case, 17% of the adult citizen-residents of Colorado were not registered to vote, whereas in Maine, only 4% are not registered. It says that in order to hold the Maine registration requirement unconstitutional, a great deal of evidence would be needed, and that such evidence does not exist in this case.

As previously reported, the Montana Green Party has been kept off the ballot in both 2018 and 2020, even though both years, the Secretary of State said the party petition had enough valid signatures and conducted a primary for the party. The party was removed both times after activism by Democrats. In 2018 the Democrats persuaded a state court that the party petition lacked enough valid signatures, contrary to the Secretary of State’s finding. In 2020, the party petition was not challenged, but Democrats got a list of the signers and persuaded about 600 of them to retract their signatures. Thus the petition was nullified, six months after it had been validated.

The Green Party filed a federal lawsuit in 2018 against the unequal distribution requirement. The law requires signatures from 34 of the 100 state house districts. Instead of requiring an equal number of signatures in these equal-population districts, the law irrationally requires as few as 55 signatures in some districts, but up to 150 in others. This violates a U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Moore v Ogilvie. Nevertheless, on March 20, 2020, a U.S. District Court upheld the unequal distribution requirement. That case is Montana Green Party v Stapleton, now pending in the Ninth Circuit, 20-35340. The briefs in that case will all be submitted by November 13, 2020, and a decision is likely in 2021.

There was also a federal case involving the 2020 events, Davis v Stapleton. That was filed by some Green Party nominees for congress and state office in August 2020, charging that it violates the rights of the party’s nominees, and also the rights of the 13,000 voters who signed the petition and who did not retract their signatures, to remove a party because some of the signers recanted. That case failed to get injunctive relief from all three levels of federal court, and the Green Party nominees voluntarily dismissed that case on September 15, 2020. In the U.S. Supreme Court, the party had requested relief from Justice Elena Kagan on September 11, but she had denied it on September 14 without asking for a response from the other side and without asking the other justices.

If the 2020 Green Party nominees had not dismissed their case, the Ninth Circuit would have eventually ruled on the constitutional due process issue. This had been a case of first impression. In all history, in all states, there had never before been an incident in which people who signed a petition to get a party on the ballot were permitted to remove their names months later, thus cancelling the party’s legal existence. We will get a decision on this point from the Montana Supreme Court, however. That court denied injunctive relief on August 19, 2020, and said it would explain its reasoning “in due course.” That opinion still hasn’t emerged.

This year, the Republican Party has U.S. House nominees in 416 districts, the most the party has had since 2010, when it had 428. The U.S. House has 435 seats (not counting Delegates from places that are not states).

The only districts without Republicans are: Alabama 7; these seven districts in California, 12, 18, 29, 34, 38, 44, 53; these four districts in Massachusetts, 1, 3, 7, 8; these three districts in New York, 5, 16, 25; North Carolina 12; Rhode Island 1; Tennessee 5; and Washington 10. Also there is no Republican for Delegate from the District of Columbia.

The top-two systems in California and Washington hurt the Republican Party. Republicans ran in every district in Washington, and every district in California except for the 38th district. But they didn’t place first or second in the primary, so couldn’t qualify for November. The strict Massachusetts primary ballot access requirements also always hurt the Republican Party.

In 2018 the Republicans only had candidates in 398 districts.

In 2020, the only party with candidates in more than one state that also had more congressional nominees in 2020 than it did in 2018 is the Libertarian Party. It had 116 in 2018, and 119 in 2020. That doesn’t include the three New York Libertarians who are also the nominees of another party (the Libertarian Party of New York nominated two Republicans, and one SAM Party member).