On August 10, U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers, a Clinton appointee, issued an opinion in Nelson v Warner, 3:19cv-898. This is the Democratic Party’s lawsuit against the West Virginia law that puts the party that carried the presidential election in the last election on the top line of the ballot for all its nominees. The opinion declares the law unconstitutional. The state has appealed to the Fourth Circuit. On August 11, Judge Chambers refused to stay his own order, which had directed the state to come up with a neutral method to determine ballot order.

The Fourth Circuit case number is 20-1860. The states of Georgia and Texas have filed amicus briefs on the side of the state of West Virginia.

On August 11, Connecticut held the nation’s last 2020 presidential primaries. There are no results yet on the Secretary of State’s website, but news reports say in the Republican primary, Donald Trump received 80%; uncommitted 13%; Rocky De La Fuente 7%.

The Democratic primary: Joe Biden 84.5%; Bernie Sanders 11.6%; uncommitted 2.4%; Tulsi Gabbard 1.4%. See this story.

On August 13, the Connecticut Libertarian Party filed this brief in the Second Circuit in Libertarian Party of Connecticut v Lamont, 20-2179. This is the ballot access case that concerns the health crisis, and also covers ballot access problems that had existed before the health crisis began. The party needs ballot access relief for most of its congressional candidates, but it was already ballot-qualified for president, so this case dosn’t impact the presidential election.