On June 13, officials for the state of Alabama asked for a second extension of time in which to file their response in Hall v Merrill, 18-1362, now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The original deadline for the state had been May 30, but the state had already obtained an extension until July 1. Now the state hopes to extend that to July 31.

The issue originally was whether it is unconstitutional to require an independent candidate for U.S. House to obtain signatures equal to 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, in a special election, when there isn’t as much time as in a regular election. The U.S. District Court struck down the law as applied to special elections, but the U.S. District Court Judge issued that opinion after the election was over. The state appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. The Eleventh Circuit ruled 2-1 that ballot access cases involving special elections are moot if they are decided after the election is over. Therefore, the Eleven Circuit erased the U.S. District Court decision.

In the U.S. Supreme Court, the issue is whether constitutional ballot access cases are moot, after the election, if the election is a special election. Almost every other Circuit has weighed in on mootness in ballot access constitutional cases, and no other circuit agrees with the Eleventh Circuit.

We won’t know whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take this case until early October 2019.

On June 5, the New York State Senate passed S5462. No one voted against it. It lets candidates who have the nomination of a minor party remove themselves from the November ballot, if they had sought the nomination of a major party but lost the major party primary. Under current law, if a smaller qualified party nominates someone who is also seeking a major party nomination but fails to get it, that candidate is stuck on the November ballot against their wish (unless they do some very arcane things, such as get the minor party’s nomination for a judicial post).

Howard Schultz has never declared he would be an independent presidential candidate, but he had said he might, and he had been making public appearances earlier this year. However, he stopped in May 2019, and now has said he stopped because he had medical problems, which are being resolved. See this story. He indicated he still might run, but won’t take any action until September 2019 at the earliest.