In 2016, Rocky De La Fuente sued Arizona over its independent presidential primary ballot access law. It required almost twice as many signatures as were needed for a new party in 2016. The independent presidential petition requirement was 35,514 signatures, but the party petition was 20,119. Courts in Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina had held that it is unconstitutional for a state to require more signatures for a single independent candidate than for an entire new party.

Also, the Arizona independent presidential petition had not been used since 2008, and the U.S. Supreme Court has said that ballot access procedures that are seldom used are probably unconstitutional.

The case moved very slowly, but finally in 2019, a U.S. District Court Magistrate upheld the law. De La Fuente appealed to the Ninth Circuit. However, on January 9, 2020, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the appeal because De La Fuente had failed to file his opening brief by the deadline.

This had been De La Fuente’s only ongoing ballot access case that relates to getting on the ballot in the general election.

Mike Feinstein has this op-ed in the Riverside, California newspaper, the Press Enterprise. The ad mentions that the “Common Sense” Party is trying to qualify for the ballot, and that the party’s leaders, former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell and former independent State Senator Quentin Kopp, believe that it can be a voice for centrists. The op-ed points out, though, that in the top-two primary, having Common Sense Party candidates for Congress and partisan state office on the primary ballot will probably make it even more likely that two Democrats will emerge from the primary, and then that race will have only two Democrats on the November ballot.

Campbell and Kopp have this op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, boosting the Common Sense Party. They seem to feel the top-two system will help the Common Sense Party, if it gets on the ballot. They ignore the fact that in the entire history of top-two in California, there is not one instance of a minor party candidate placing first or second, if both a Democrat and a Republican had also filed for that office.

On January 9, U.S. District Court Judge Charles B. Kornmann, a Clinton appointee, struck down a South Dakota 2019 law that requires initiative circulators to register with the Secretary of State. The register must include the circulator’s address, all phone numbers, and all email addresses. The circulator must also reveal where he or she is registered to vote, and whether the circulator is a registered sex offender.

All of this material would be publicly available. The law also required circulators to wear a badge with their circulator ID number.

Here is the 15-page decision in SD Voice v Noem, 1:19cv-1017.

The first part of the opinion explains that the law is worded not only to apply to circulators, but to any person who urges any other person to sign an initiative petition. That probably is not what the legislature intended, but the law says it applies to “anyone who solicits petition signatures”. The opinion says that could even include a newpaper editorial writer.