On September 10, California’s Secretary of State cleared an initiative for circulation. It needs 623,212 signatures in the next six months. It asks voters if California should seek to become an independent country. If it gets at least 55%, then it sets up a Commission to study the issue.
On September 10, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered that election officials stop mailing postal ballots until the Court can decide whether Howie Hawkins and/or Kanye West should be on the ballot. Here is a copy of the order.
On September 10, a 3-judge U.S. District Court issued an 82-page opinion, determining that President Trump’s order not to include non-citizens in the Census count for reapportionment purposes is unconstitutional. The presidential order had been promulgated in July 2020. State of New York v Trump, s.d., 1:20cv-5770.
The Fourteenth Amendment, section two, says, “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
On September 10, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously rejected Kanye West’s independent presidential petition. Although it had enough valid signatures, each sheet needed to have a photocopy of the original declaration of candidacy. But the West petition used a copy of a declaration of candidacy that was not submitted as the original declaration. The opinion has photocopies of the original declaration and also of the declaration that was shown on each petition sheet. State ex rel West v LaRose, 2020-Ohio-4380. Here is the 14-page opinion.
No one qualified as an independent presidential candidate, nor as the presidential nominee of an unqualified party, in North Dakota this year.
The only ballot-qualified parties in North Dakota are Republican, Democratic-Non-Partisan-League, and Libertarian.
With only three presidential candidates on the ballot, this is the smallest number of presidential candidates on the ballot in North Dakota since 1920, when there were also just three.
