According to this news story, several independent candidates are planning to sue Arkansas if the state doesn’t extend the petition deadline and cut the number of signatures. Among them is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, who needs 10,000 valid signatures by May 1.
On April 21, a Colorado state trial court put Michelle Ferrigno Warren on the June 30 Democratic primary ballot for U.S. Senate, even though she needed 10,500 valid signatures and she only had 5,383 valid signatures.
The decision finds that it is customary and rational, in normal times, that petitions receive the most signatures in the weeks just before the deadline. In a state like Colorado, where the deadline for primary petitions was March 17, that is partly due to weather. Early petitioning in cold weather periods is less productive, partly because fewer people are outside.
In this case, the court found that it was almost impossible to hire paid circulators early in the year, because so many of them were working for very high payment for various presidential primary candidates around the nation. Mike Bloomberg’s campaign in some instances was paying $20 per signature, because Bloomberg started so late that his petitions were rush jobs.
Here is the 28-page decision in Warren v Griswold, 20cv-31077. It says, “The Court is mindful that it is reading and interpreting the Election Code and Colorado Supreme Court precedent in a nearly empty courthouse while a global pandemic is unfolding outside its windows…strict adherence to the signature requirement for primary petitions must yield to this unprecedented public health emergency.
Also, “signature collection is a ‘very personal activity’ …In the best of times, engaging strangers in public, holding their attention, and acquiring their signatures on a petition is challenging.”
On April 21, the proponents of two Arizona statewide initiatives filed an appeal in Arizonans for Fair Elections v Hobbs, the case over whether Arizona should permit initiative campaigns to gather electronic signatures. U.S. District Court Judge Dominic Lanza, a Trump appointee, had rejected their case.
Arizona permits electronic signatures for candidate petitions, but not independent presidential petitions and not petitions to qualify a party.
According to this story, New York Assemblywoman Rebecca Seawright, who was removed from the 2020 Democratic primary ballot over a paperwork error, will run as an independent this year if she can’t get back on the Democratic primary ballot. She will also bring a lawsuit.
Law Professor Jeffrey Abramson has this interesting article in Emory Law Journal, comparing presidential electors to jurors. He notes that jurors are asked to pledge that they will follow the judge’s instructions as to the relevant law. But if jurors return a verdict that contradicts the judge’s understanding of the law, we do not punish the jurors.
The article talks about a time long ago in England when jurors were punished by a lower court judge, but then a higher English court reversed their convictions.
The article could have been better if, when it talked about Ray v Blair, a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court opinion about presidential electors, it explained that the case involved a pledge before a candidate could get on the Alabama Democratic primary ballot. Back then the Alabama Democratic Party chose its presidential elector candidates in a primary. No state currently does that. The article probably will lead most readers to assume Alabama had a pledge for actual presidential electors, not just candidates for presidential elector from one particular party.
Also the article says that all 39 electoral votes received by Strom Thurmond in 1948 were from electors who violated their pledge. Actually Strom Thurmond won the popular vote in the states that produced those presidential electors. He got more popular votes than Harry Truman in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And in Alabama, Truman wasn’t even on the ballot, so obviously Thurmond won. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
