On August 21, the Libertarian Party asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal against the federal campaign finance law that won’t let a deceased person’s estate distribute its bequest to the party, except by doling out the money in small pieces each year. Libertarian National Committee v Federal Election Commission, 19-234. Here is the cert petition. The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C., Circuit, had upheld the federal rule.
Earlier this year, the Third Circuit struck down Delaware’s law, requiring most types of state judges to be members of one of the state’s two largest political parties. Delaware is in the process of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse that decision. The state has won approval to delay its cert petition until September 4, 2019. The case is now called John C. Carney v James R. Adams, 19A57.
On August 23, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly dismissed the lawsuit Gonzales v Madigan, n.d., 1:16cv-7915. It had been filed in 2016 by one of Michael Madigan’s opponents in the Democratic primary. Madigan is a member of the Illinois House of Representatives. He has been speaker for 33 years and is also chair of the Illinois Democratic Party. His district has been tending toward being a majority-Hispanic district. In the 2016 primary, Madigan appears to have recruited two candidates with Latino names to run against him, to divide the Hispanic vote, and defeat Jason Gonzales. Madigan won the primary.
In 1973, the Seventh Circuit had ruled in Smith v Cherry that when a sham candidate is recruited, that is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Gonzales depended on that precedent, and filed a federal lawsuit against Madigan. But after three years of complicated proceedings in the Gonzales case, the judge dismissed it on the grounds that during the 2016 primary campaign, the charge that two of the candidates were sham candidates had been widely publicized. Here is the 19-page decision.
MinnPost has this article about the new Libertarian Party ballot access lawsuit in Minnesota, challenging wording on the petitions that says the signer does not intend to vote in an upcoming primary. MinnPost is an on-line newspaper covering Minnesota government and politics.
Portland, Maine, already used ranked choice voting for Mayor. An initiative petition to use it for city council races appears to have fallen short by a few hundred signatures, although that determination is mired in controversy. See this story.
