On June 8, the Illinois State Board of Elections asked the Seventh Circuit to reverse all the ballot access relief granted to minor party and independent candidates back on April 23. The State Board even wants to remove the statewide nominees of the Libertarian and Green Parties, even though they agreed to this in April. In the Seventh Circuit, the case is 20-1961.

Ordinarily an appeal must be filed within 30 days, but the state was able to delay its decision to appeal, because in the interim period, the State had asked for a modification of the April 23 relief. That extended the deadline for the state to appeal. Although the U.S. District Court Judge mostly refused to revise her earlier ruling, she did move the new petition deadline from August 7 to July 20. But that didn’t satisfy the state, and now it wants all relief reversed.

Here is the June 15 brief of the minor party and independent candidates, opposing any change by the Seventh Circuit.

UPDATE: here is the June 15 brief of Kyle Kopitke, independent presidential candidate who has intervened in the case on the side of the plaintiffs.

Josh Putnam, who runs the FrontloadingHQ blog about presidential primaries, has this article at 538.com. He discusses the idea that if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that presidential electors are free to vote for any qualified candidate, that “chaos” would insue. Putnam says that is a groundless fear. He points out that in the states in which there were “disobedient” elections in 2016, the major parties had a decentralized system for choosing presidential elector nominees, but that the major parties are free to centralize their method. He says that the Washington state Democratic Party has already done so.

A decision will be out soon from the U.S. Supreme Court about presidential elector freedom of choice. Thanks to Fairvote for the link.

The Socialist Equality Party has announced plans to attempt to place its presidential nominee on the Illinois ballot. See this press release. The presidential nominee is Joseph Kishore.

No party with “socialist” or “socialism” in its name has been on the ballot for statewide office in Illinois since 1992, when the Socialist Workers Party was on.