Brock Pierce says he will be an independent presidential candidate, according to this Forbes story.
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On July 6, two voters in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit to disqualify Brenda Jones from the Democratic primary ballot for U.S. House, 13th district.
Michigan election law, sec. 168.558(4), requires candidates to swear that they have no unpaid campaign finance fines, and the lawsuit alleges that Jones does have such unpaid fines, but that she committed perjury when she signed the statement saying she does not have such outstanding fines.
Here is the Complaint in Davis v Wayne County Election Commission, e.d., 2:20cv-11819. The primary is August 4. The ballots have already been printed. The plaintiffs ask that votes for Jones not be counted.
The lawsuit is barred by the fact that Jones is running for federal office, and if a state law were enforced for a federal candidate relating to campaign finance, it would be unconstitutional on qualifications grounds. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.
The California legislature has placed a proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2020 ballot. Proposition 18 will ask voters if the voting age should be reduced to 17, if the voter would be age 18 by the general election for the same offices.
On July 6, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinions in Chiafalo v Washington and Colorado Department of State v Baca, numbers 19-608 and 19-465. The Court ruled unanimously that states can replace or punish presidential electors who vote for someone other than the candidate who carried the popular vote in that state.
The decision is by Justice Elena Kagan, who said the Constitution is silent on the question. The only precedent she cited is Ray v Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952). But that case was over whether a political party had the right to exclude from its primary ballot the names of candidates for presidential elector who wouldn’t sign a pledge prepared by the party, that they would vote for the popular vote winner. At the time, the Alabama Democratic Party chose presidential elector nominees in its primary. No state does that any longer. The decision is only 18 pages.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch agreed with the outcome, but they would have upheld the state laws on Tenth Amendment grounds. Here is the Washington state opinion.
Here is a one-paragraph decision in the Colorado case.
Under the literal language of the laws of these two states, the electors would be forced to vote for a deceased candidate. Footnote 8 mentions this problem and says states are of course free to write laws dealing with this.
On July 6, the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion in Buscemi v Bell, 19-2355, a North Carolina ballot access case. The Fourth Circuit said the March 3 petition deadline for independent candidates, even presidential candidates, is constitutional. This completely contradicts the U.S. Supreme Court opinion Anderson v Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, which struck down Ohio’s independent presidential petition deadline of March 20. Furthermore in the Ohio case, only 5,000 signatures were required; but in North Carolina in 2020, independent candidates need 70,666 signatures.
The decision does not mention Anderson v Celebrezze’s holding. Nor does it mention Anderson v Morris, 636 F.2d 55 (1980), in which the Fourth Circuit invalidated the Maryland independent petition deadline, which by coincidence was also March 3. The Fourth Circuit now says it is constitutional to put the independent candidate deadline on the date of the primary, or the day before. That may be true for independent candidates for non-presidential office, but it is not true for presidential independent candidates. If that were true, it would have been constitutional in 2008 for New Hampshire to have had an independent presidential petition deadline of January 8.
The decision also upholds the number of signatures, even though it is a number six times as high as the number of signatures for a new party. In 2004 a U.S. District Court in North Carolina ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to require more signatures for a statewide independent candidate than for a new party. DeLaney v Bartlett, 370 F.Supp.373 (m.d.). The new Fourth Circuit opinion does not mention DeLaney v Bartlett. The decision also does not mention a 1980 decision of the eastern district of North Carolina, Greaves v State Board of Elections, 508 F.Supp.78, which struck down the April 25 deadline for independent candidates for all office.
Nor does the decision mention the U.S. Supreme Court opinion Mandel v Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, which said that early non-presidential independent deadlines are unconstitutional if the historical record shows that few independent candidates ever qualify. In the entire history of North Carolina government-printed ballots, only once has any independent statewide candidate ever qualfied.
The decision is by Judge Barbara Keenan, an Obama appointee; and signed by Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee; and Pamela Harris, an Obama appointee.