Delaware and New Jersey hold their presidential primaries on Tuesday, July 7. This is the first time in U.S. history that any state has held presidential primaries in a month later than June. Still to come are the presidential primaries in Connecticut, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico.
Brock Pierce says he will be an independent presidential candidate, according to this Forbes story.
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.
