On December 11, a state trial court in South Carolina issued a ruling in Inglis v Heindel, civ 2019-cp-400-5486. The judge ruled in favor of the South Carolina Republican Party, on the issue of whether the party must hold a presidential primary in 2020. The party’s executive committee had voted not to hold a primary. Some Republican voters had sued, because the party’s rules say only a party convention can make that decision, but that argument did not prevail. See this story. Thanks to David Sturrock for the link.

Filing for the Colorado presidential primaries closed on December 9. The Democratic ballot will have 17 candidates; the Republican ballot will have seven. See the list in this news story.

Democrats are Bennet, Biden, Bloomberg, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Delaney, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Patrick, Sanders, Steyer, Warren, Wells, Williamson, and Yang.

Republicans are Andini, De La Fuente, Istvan, Matern, Trump, Walsh, and Weld.

On December 9, the Arizona Libertarian Party filed this cert petition in the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona Libertarian Party v Hobbs. This is the case over ballot access for members of a small qualified party that is not in its first four years on the ballot. In 2015, the Republican majority in the Arizona legislature passed a law that singles out the Libertarian Party and makes it virtually impossible for any Libertarian to get himself or herself on the Libertarian primary ballot. The same law did not apply to the Green Party, or to any party that is in its first four years on the ballot. UPDATE: the case number is 19-757. The state’s response is due January 13, 2020.

Because Arizona forces all qualified parties to nominate by primary, this meant that no Arizona Libertarians could get on the ballot for congress or partisan state office in both 2016 and 2018. Yet the Ninth Circuit upheld it earlier this year. The U.S. Supreme Court has never before had a case on petitions for access to a primary ballot.