On March 4, the Maine Libertarian Party filed this request for injunctive relief in Baines v Dunlap, 1:19cv-509. Last year the Libertarian Party filed this case against Maine election laws that (1) force it to qualify as a party in January of an election year; (2) automatically erase all of a party’s registered members when it goes off the ballot, which it did in November 2018; (3) forces newly-qualifying parties to nominate by primary and makes it virtually impossible for a member of a newly-qualifying party to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot.

The brief points out that even the Maine Green Party, with 43,143 registered members, was unable to place its 2020 US Senate candidate, Lisa Savage, on the party’s primary ballot, because the law requires 2,000 signatures of party members and they are scattered around the state. That makes it virtually impossible to complete such a petition, for a party of that size.

On March 5, the Initiative & Referendum Institute, and the Center for Competitive Democracy, filed this amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in Schmitt v LaRose, 19-974. The amicus lists each state that has the initiative, and tells how many initiatives have been enacted in each of those states. It singles out significant initiatives that passed.

On March 2, U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright, an Obama appointee, struck down city ordinances in St. Paul and Minneapolis that require landlords to furnish new tenants with information about how to register to vote. The landlords were required to distribute a pamphlet prepared by election administrators. Minnesota Voters Alliance v St. Paul, 0:19cv-358. Here is the decision.

The basis was the First Amendment, which generally does not permit government to compel private actors to speak.