On October 24, the Third Circuit voted 8-6 not to rehear Eakin v Adams County Board of Elections, 25-1644. This is the case over Pennsylvania postal absentee ballots, and whether a voter who forgets to fill out the date on the outer envelope loses his or her vote as a result.
The Octdober 26 Denver Post has a lengthy news story about the new leadership of the Colorado Libertarian Party. It says that former state chair Hannah Goodman, a stalwart of the Mises Caucus, says she will leave the party and become a Democrat.
On October 23, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Texas member of Congress, Ronny Jackson. The case had been filed in Texas to stop the California election. The plaintiff, Jackson, claimed that if the California election went ahead, that would make it likely that Democrats would gain a majority in the U.S. House in November 2026, and that would injure Jackson because he would have less influence. Jackson v Weber, n.d. of Texas, 2:25cv-197. Judge Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, said Jackson did not have standing. Here is the order of dismissal.
On October 24, U.S. District Court Judge Kenly Kato, a Biden appointee, refused to enjoin the California election in a lawsuit filed by Steve Hilton, a California Republican candidate for Governor in 2026. Hilton v Weber, c.d., 8:25cv-1988. The case is still alive but the judge said the lawsuit can continue after the election, if Prop. 50 passes. Hilton had charged that the districts would not be equal in population, and also that California precedent doesn’t merit mid-decade districting. Here is his Complaint.
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.
