Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, 19-5117, is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. The opening brief is due July 29, 2019. This is the lawsuit over the general election presidential debates. It challenges the 15% polling rule established by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
On June 28, New Hampshire Representative Max Abramson of Seabrook said he is changing his registration from Republican to Libertarian. He had made a similar change in May 2016. While he was in the legislature then, he changed from Republican to Libertarian, but did not run for re-election. Instead he became the Libertarian nominee for Governor in 2016. He polled enough votes to give the Libertarian Party qualified status, which lasted until the 2018 election.
Some time afterwards, he changed his registration back to Republican, and was elected to the House again in 2018, as one of the three Republican representatives from the Rockingham 20 district.
He now says he had given the Republican Party one more chance to show that it is a small government party, but that the 2019 session of the legislature has disillusioned him about the Republican Party.
On June 28, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of some Florida ex-felons who just lost their ability to register to vote (or to remain registered) because they are unable to pay past legal financial obligations incurred in connection with their past conviction. The Complaint estimates that 83% of Florida ex-felons have past financial obligations. Gruver v Barton, n.d., 1:19cv-121. The case was filed only minutes after Governor DeSantis signed the bill that imposed the restrictions.
The Complaint is 74 pages. The case is assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker, an Obama appointee.
On June 28, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 7066, the omnibus election law bill. It provides that ex-felons may not register to vote if they still have unpaid court costs, fines, or restitution. It also expands the zone outside polling places in which First Amendment activity is banned from 100 feet to 150 feet. This includes petitioning. Also, it moves the non-presidential primary, which is in August, one week earlier than it had been. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
The bill had passed the legislature on May 3, 2019.
On June 27, a U.S. District Court upheld Arizona’s policy of not holding an election to fill John McCain’s Senate seat until November 2020. McCain died in August 2018. The voters who filed the lawsuit Tedards v Ducey, 2:18cv-4241, had argued that the constitutional protections for voters required that the election should be sooner than that. Here is the 25-page decision.
The voters also challenged the Arizona law that requires the Governor to appoint a new U.S. Senator who is a member of the same party as the Senator who is being replaced. The opinion says the plaintiffs don’t have standing to challenge that law.
