On July 10, the Texas Democratic Party lost its lawsuit over the order of candidates on the general election ballot. Miller v Hughs, w.d., 1:19cv-1071. The law says the nominees of the party that won the last gubernatorial election are all listed first on the ballot. U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel, a Bush Jr. appointee, said that such cases cannot be adjudicated by federal courts, because their is no objective standard for a fair system. He supported this conclusion by citing the U.S. Supreme Court decision Rucho v Common Cause, the 2019 decision that said federal courts cannot adjudicate partisan gerrymandering lawsuits because there are no objective standards for imaging a fair redistricting process.

The idea that ballot order lawsuit cannot be adjudicated because there is no method for a fair system is obviously wrong. There are two fair methods for writing a law on the order of candidates on the ballot, and approximately one-third of the states use one or the other. Either the state can hold a drawing to determine order of candidates on the ballot, or it can rotate the names of candidates so that each candidate has an equal chance to be on the top line in a share of all the precincts. For example, under rotation, if there are four candidates for a particular race, each candidate will be on the top line in one-fourth of the precincts.

There have been federal court decisions on the constitutionality of various laws on this subject since the 1960’s, and no other federal court had ever come to this conclusion. The Democratic Party asked for reconsideration, but it was denied on August 19. It seems highly likely the party will appeal.

Although many of Kanye West’s ballot access petitions around the country have been rejected, only in Ohio has he brought a lawsuit to get back on the ballot. His lawsuit was filed in the Ohio Supreme Court on August 26. Here is the Complaint.

The Secretary of State had rejected the petition because the copy of the declaration of candidacy on each petition sheet differs slightly from the original. The declaration of candidacy on the petitions has the names of a committee on vacancies. Also the signature of the vice-presidential nominee, Michelle Tidball, doesn’t look the same on both documents.

An Ohio voter, Lewis Goldfarb, has asked to intervene in the case. He says there are other flaws in the West petition that the Secretary of State has not named. For example, he says that Kanye West does not actually reside at the address that he listed as his address. The Ohio Supreme Court has asked both sides whether they feel Goldbarb should be allowed to intervene.

On August 27, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the initiative to establish a top-four system should not appear on the ballot. The same decision also removed an initiative to set up a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Arkansas Voters First and Open Primaries Arkansas v Thurston, cv-20-454.

The initiative proponents were required to certify that they had checked the criminal record of all paid circulators and that they all were free of having a criminal record. Instead, they certified that they had checked the criminal records, but made a technical error and didn’t say what the results of the background checks were. This is a very abstruse reason to reject any petition. The vote was 6-1. Here is the decision.

The top-four system would have ended the ability of parties to have nominees for office other than president. One result would have been to make it more difficult for a qualified party to remain on the ballot. If the measure had been on the ballot and had passed, the only way a party could remain on the ballot would be polling 3% for president. This is a severe test. In the last 100 years, the only parties, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which have polled at least 3% for president in the nation have been the Progressive Party of 1924, the American Party (also called American Independent Party) of 1968, the Reform Party of 1996, and the Libertarian Party in 2016.