Joe Mathews Column Says California Democratic Leaders Ought to Suggest a State Constitutional Amendment to Allow Law on Candidate Tax Returns

Joe Mathews, a commentator on California politics, here writes that if California Democratic legislators and Governor Gavin Newsom really believe in the idea that candidates should be kept off ballots if they don’t reveal their income taxes, they ought to put a proposed state constitutional amendment on the ballot. If such an amendment passed the legislature and then the electorate also voted for it, then there would no longer be a state constitutional barrier to the law that the legislature passed this year, requiring presidential primary candidates to reveal their tax returns.

Of course, even if all that happened, there is still no guarantee that such a tax returns-ballot law would be constitutional under the U.S. Constitution.

Jill Stein Asks Federal Court to Bar Philadelphia ES&S Vote-Counting Machines

On November 26, Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate, asked a U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to re-open her settlement with the state over vote-counting machines. A year ago she and the state had settled her lawsuit, and the state promised to use only vote-counting machines with a paper trail. Stein v Boockvar, e.d., 2:16cv-6287.

Despite the settlement, Philadelphia County still plans to use ES&S machines, which do not actually create a paper trail. The state says the ES&S system is secure. Here is Stein’s brief. The judge has asked the state to respond.

Tucson Daily Newspaper Carries Op-Ed, Criticizing Arizona Ballot Access

The Arizona Daily Star, daily newspaper for Tucson, has this op-ed, criticizing Arizona ballot access requirements for minor parties. It focuses on the Green Party’s loss of qualified status. The op-ed does not say that the petition deadline for the party to get back on the ballot is in two days, and the party has not finished its petition, which requires approximately 37,000 signatures.

It is expected that the Green Party will sue the state over that extremely early petition deadline. The Green Party did have a lawsuit in 2014 over the deadline that existed that year, which was in February of the election year. That lawsuit failed because the attorney for the Green Party did not submit any evidence that the early deadline injured the party. He had assumed that he could win the case on precedents. The new lawsuit will not make that legal error.

The legislature moved the petition deadline from February of the election year, to November of the year before the election, early in 2019.

South Carolina State Court is Taking a Long Time to Decide if Republican Presidential Primary Will be Held

On October 18, a South Carolina state circuit court heard oral arguments in Inglis v Heindel, 2019-cp-4005486. The issue is whether the Republican presidential primary will be held in February. The state party rules say only the state convention may cancel a presidential primary. But the state executive committee, not the state convention, cancelled the primary.

It is odd that the court is taking so long to issue an opinion.