On February 10, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland, a Bush Jr. appointee, refused to dismiss the lawsuit Spirit Lake Tribe v Jaeger, 1:18cv-222. This case was filed in 2018 over North Dakota’s law, requiring voters at the polls to show photo ID that includes the voter’s residential address. Many Native Americans do not have such ID. Here is the 13-page ruling. Now there will be a trial.
On February 7, the federal government filed a notice of appeal in Fitisemanu v USA. This is the case in which a U.S. District Court in Utah ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires that persons born in American Samoa be considered citizens. The reason the case was in Utah, was that an adult born in American Samoa now lives in Utah, and he filed the lawsuit.
In the Tenth Circuit, the case is 20-4017.
Two West Virginia State Senators have introduced SB 733. It eases the definition of “political party”, from a group that got 1% for Governor, to a group that got 1% for either Governor or President. The authors are Senator Charles Trump (R-Berkeley Springs) and William Ihlenfeld (D-Wheeling). Thanks to Jeff Becker for this news.
There is a bill pending in the House to also improve the definition of political party, HB 2169, but so far it hasn’t moved.
On February 7, the Virginia House passed HB 1107, which lets local governments use ranked choice voting for elections for their own officers. The vote was 57-42. Here is the text.
Minnesota law on the order of candidates on the general election ballot is unique. It says that nominees of ballot-qualified parties must be listed first, in inverse order of how many votes each of them received at the last election for all offices. Minnesota has four ballot-qualified parties in 2020. Applying the law, and using 2018 election returns, the existing law means that the order of candidates on the November 2020 will put the Legal Marijuana Now nominees at the top, followed by the nominees of the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Parties, followed by Republicans, followed by Democrats. Below them will be the nominees of the unqualified parties, such as Libertarians, Greens, etc.
Last year the Minnesota Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the law. The party argues in favor of a random method to determine which of the qualified party nominees appears on the ballot for each office, but the Democratic Party does not argue that the nominees of the unqualified parties should be permitted to have any chance for the top line.
On February 3, the state filed this brief, which pokes fun at the Democratic Party for arguing for a chance for the top line for itself, but not for the unqualified parties. The state also says that the Democratic Party’s argument, predicting that the Legal Marijuana Now and Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Parties will have virtually no candidates, is completely unsound because it is too early to predict how many nominees those two parties will have. Candidates need not file for the primary until June 2, which is far in the future. The primary itself is August 11. The Democratic Party wants the court to assume the two cannabis-related parties will have virtually no nominees, because it wants the court to assume that practically every race will list the Republican nominee first.
