On September 5, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, an Obama appointee, upheld a restrictive practice of Indiana election officials when they validate signatures on petitions. She refused to grant injunctive relief to John Schmitz, an independent candidate for Mayor of Indianapolis in the November 2019 election. He would have had enough valid signatures if the instances at which the voter filled in his or her current address, instead of the address of registration, could have been counted. But she refused to order that those signatures be counted. Here is the 17-page opinion.

The judge said it does bother her that the government petition form says, “Residence Address”, instead of “Voter registration address.” But she said it can be presumed that Indiana voters have read the election code, and they know or ought to know that petitions require the voter registration address. She did not even mention the federal Voting Rights Act, which has language which other courts have used to recognize this type of petition signature. The case is Schmitz v Marion County Board of Elections, s.d., 1:19cv-3314.

As previously reported, a Third Circuit en banc panel already agreed with lower court rulings striking down a Delaware law that requires judges on most state courts to be registered members of one or the other of the two largest parties. The case had been won by an independent voter who wanted to become a state judge. UPDATE: this post is not accurate, and a cert petition has been filed, called Governor of Delaware v James R. Adams.

Although Delaware asked the U.S. Supreme Court for additional time to file a cert petition, and received additional time, the new due date for Delaware was September 4, 2019, which was yesterday. It appears that the cert petition did not get filed by the deadline. The attorney who had asked for more time is no longer at the phone number that he gave to the court when he asked for more time, so it is not easy to find out from him why no cert petition was filed.

On September 3, California Senate Bill 696 was amended to be even more severe. This is the bill that requires the American Independent Party to choose a new name that doesn’t include the words “independent” or “independence”. As amended, the bill requires the party to choose a new name by October 29, 2019, or it would be disqualified the following day. Here is the amended bill.