On March 31, Don Blankenship, a leading candidate for the Constitution Party presidential nomination, won a procedural victory in his defamation lawsuit against the National Republican Senatorial Committee and many large media companies. Blankenship v Napolitano, s.d.W.V., 2:19cv-236.

Here is the opinion. Some of the defendants were excused from the lawsuit, often because they showed they have virtually no readership in West Virginia. The basis for the lawsuit is that many media figures labelled Blankenship a “felon.” He was convicted of the misdemeanor of conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws in 2016, but he was never convicted of a felony, and the evidence so far suggests that the media reporters and commentators knew that, but used the term “felon” anyway. Now there will be a trial. Blankenship will need to establish that the groups he sued had malice against him. Thanks to Frank Fluckiger for this news.

South Dakota requires candidates running in primaries for Congress to file petitions to get on a primary ballot. The primary is June 2. The petition deadline was March 31. It appears from the Secretary of State’s list of candidates that no Democrat qualified for the Democratic primary ballot for U.S. House. Democrats needed 1,615 signatures of party members. This blog post originally said there didn’t seem to be a Democrat for U.S. Senate either, but on April 2, the Secretary of State showed a Democrat had filed for that office.

Generally South Dakota Democrats running for statewide office don’t need that many signatures. The law requires a number equal to 1% of the party’s last gubernatorial vote. The Democratic nominee for Governor in 2018, Billie Sutton, did unusually well for a Democrat in South Dakota. By comparison, after the 2014 gubernatorial election, Democrats only needed 706 signatures.

The legislature adjourned March 30. At the last minute it did pass a bill delaying April municipal elections, but it does not seem to have passed any bill to alter the June primary. Thanks to Dan Fishman for alerting me to the South Dakota candidate list. South Dakota does not permit write-ins in either primaries or the general election; it is one of only four states that has never permitted any write-ins. The others are Nevada, Hawaii, and Oklahoma.

Virginia holds its primaries (for office other than president) in June. Candidates for U.S. Senate needed 3,500 signatures. The law says they need 10,000, but a state court had lowered that last month to 3,500. Even though the new requirement was considerably easier than the legal requirement, and even though candidates could have been petitioning since January (before the lockdown), only three candidates had at least 3,500 valid signatures.

See this story. The candidate who filed the lawsuit that resulted in a lower requirement, Omari Faulkner, did not get on the ballot, because he had only submitted 3,769. Thanks to D.C. Sachs for the link. The story does not say how many valid signatures Faulkner had. Perhaps he would have qualified if he had asked the court to set the requirement at 3,000, instead of 3,500. Six Republicans had been trying to get on the ballot.