On July 15, the West Virginia Democratic Party won a procedural ruling in Nelson v Warner, s.d., 3:19cv-898. This is a Democratic Party case against the law concerning the order of candidates on general election ballots. It says the party that won the presidential election within that state at the last election shall have the top line.

The 20-page ruling says the party and the other plaintiffs have standing. It is likely that a decision on the merits will be released during August 2020. The case is before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Chambers, a Clinton appointee.

The Democratic Party has won a somewhat similar case in Minnesota this year, and has lost similar cases on procedural grounds in Arizona and Florida. Its Texas lawsuit is still undecided.

The Alliance Party is now ballot-qualified in Mississippi. In that state, a group becomes a qualified party by submitting a list of party officers. Mississippi has had that law ever since 1890, when the state first instituted government-printed ballots. Mississippi is the only state that has never changed its original definition of a qualified party.

On July 23, the New Mexico Libertarian Party filed a federal lawsuit against the Secretary of State for refusing to provide an accurate count of write-ins in the party’s June 2 primary. The party’s choice for State Appeals Court, Stephen P. Curtis, needed 230 write-ins in order to advance to the November election. The state canvass credited him with only 204, but the party has evidence that many of his write-ins weren’t counted.
Here is the Complaint in Curtis v Oliver, 1:20cv-748. When the party complained about the inaccurate tally, it was told that it needed to pay $3,573,400 for a recount of the approximately 1,500 Libertarian primary ballots cast. Here is a news story about the lawsuit.

As long ago as 1915, federal courts have recognized that the U.S. Constitution protects a voter’s right to have his or her vote counted. Some of the plaintiffs in the case are voters whose votes weren’t counted.