U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker will hold a trial in Baines v Dunlap, 1:19cv-509, on July 7, 2020. This is the Maine Libertarian ballot access case. The issues include the January 2020 deadline for a new party to qualify; the law that automatically converts members of a political party to independents when a party goes off the ballot; and the difficult requirements for a member of a small qualified party to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot. A statewide candidate needs 2,000 signatures of party members, no matter how many members that party has. Only party members may sign a petition to get a candidate on a primary ballot.

On December 23, the Michigan Secretary of State determined that the petition to get Deval Patrick on the Democratic presidential primary lacks enough valid signatures. The requirement is 11,345. Patrick submitted 13,777, but not enough were valid. See the Secretary of State’s letter here.

Patrick needed a petition because he didn’t declare for the presidential nomination until November 14, 2019. The deadline for the Secretary of State to decide which candidates are mentioned in the media was November 12. That deadline seems unnecessarily early. The only super-Tuesday states with an earlier deadline are Alabama and Arkansas. Thanks to several people for this news.

Florida rules for the ability of ex-felons to register to vote are mired down in unresolved issues. The legislature in 2019 passed a bill saying they can’t register if they owe any unpaid restitution, fines, or court costs. Then a U.S. District Court ruled that if ex-felons can’t afford to pay, they must be allowed to register. The state has appealed that decision to the Eleventh Circuit.

In the meantime, county election officials are stepping in, at least is Hillsborough County. See this story, which explains how the county government is helping ex-felons to handle the ambiguity, and also how private organizations are helping pay unpaid obligations. Of course, this creates a situation in which voting rights depends on which county an individual inhabits, which is something that the U.S. Supreme Court condemned in 2000 in Bush v Gore.