On October 24, Ireland elected an independent president, Catherine Connolly. This is the third time Ireland has elected an independent president. The first was in Ireland’s first presidential election, the 1938 election, in which only one candidate ran. In 2018, incumbent president Michael Higgins, who had been elected as the Labour Party nominee in the previous election, was re-elected as an independent.
U.S. DISTRICT COURT STRIKES DOWN SOUTH DAKOTA FEBRUARY PETITION DEADLINE FOR INITIATIVES
On August 29, U.S. District Court Judge Camela C. Theeler, a Biden appointee, struck down South Dakota’s petition deadline for initiative petitions. Dakotans for Health v Johnson, 4:25cv-4050. The deadline is the first Tuesday in February, which is approximately nine months before the election.
The rationale is that petitioning is free speech activity, and the deadline effectively “bans petition circulation for the nine months before an election.” That means the state was banning the type of expressive activity that petitioning represents for a very lengthy period.
The decision is based on a pair of U. S. Supreme Court decisions. Meyer v Grant in 1988 had struck down Colorado’s ban on paying petitioners, and Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation in 1999 struck down a Colorado law that said petitioners had to be registered voters. Both decisions said that petitioning for initiatives is free speech activity, something that had not previously been settled by the Supreme Court.
The recent South Dakota decision is also based on a 2023 Eighth Circuit decision that struck down South Dakota’s petition deadline for initiative petitions of November of the year before the election. That case was SD Voice v Noem, 60 F.4th 1071.
On October 23, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Gibney, an Obama appointee, declared that Virginia’s ban on felon voting violates the 1870 act of Congress that readmitted Virginia to the union. King v Youngkin, e.d., 3:23cv-408. The decision was made from the bench, and is not yet in writing.
Unlike other lawsuits that have tried to overturn bans on felons’ voting rights in Virginia and certain other states, this one is not based on the U.S. Constitution. It is based on the wording of the 1870 federal law that put Virginia back in the union. It said that Virginia was forbidden to amend its constitution to shrink voting rights. The state had argued that only Congress can make a determination that Virginia is not in compliance.
On October 17, a Virginia state court refused to remove a Democratic legislative nominee from the Virginia general election ballot. See this story. The lawsuit had been filed by voters who argued that the candidate doesn’t really live in the district in which she is running. See this story.
On October 22, Senator Daniel Thatcher, the only Forward Party state legislator in the nation, said he will resign his seat this year. Under Utah law, when there is a vacancy in a legislative seat, the party of that former legislator chooses the replacement. However, the Forward Party has pledged to set up an on-line poll to let any registered voter in the district choose a replacement. Candidates must file by November 11. They must be Forward Party members. Voting will be December 8-11.
