The Tenth Circuit will hear Baca v Williams, 18-1173, on January 24, 2019, at 8:30 a.m., in Denver. This is the Colorado “disobedient” presidential elector case.
Reply
On November 7, the Eighth Circuit refused to rehear Abdurrahman v Dayton, 16-4551. The rehearing request had been pending for two months. This is the case filed by a 2016 Democratic presidential elector from Minnesota who had refused to vote for Hillary Clinton. The state had then replaced him as a presidential elector. The Eighth Circuit original decision had said that the case is moot.
The Utah Republican Party is currently asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case over how parties nominate. The state government notified the court on November 13 that it will not bother to file a response.
The Republican Party has the support of many amici briefs from many organizations. A later blog post will list them. The U.S. Supreme Court web page has yet to be updated, so that the full list is not yet known.
The issue in the case is whether the First Amendment’s freedom of association clause protects the ability of a party to decide for itself how to nominate candidates.
If the Court is interested in the case, it will probably ask the Utah government to file a response.
On November 13, the Prohibition Party nominated its national ticket for 2020, via a telephone conference call. Bill Bayes of Mississippi is the presidential nominee. Connie Gammon of Tennessee is the vice-presidential nominee.
An earlier version of this post said Bayes is the first presidential nominee from Mississippi, but the Constitution Party of Texas in 1960, and the Reform Party in 2008, also had presidential nominees who lived in Mississippi. Thanks to the commenters for pointing this out, especial Rick Knox.
Parties in Alaska are qualified in advance of a presidential election if they either polled 3% for Governor, or if they have registration equal to 3% of the total vote cast for Governor. In 2014 the Alaska Libertarian Party received over 3% of the vote for Governor, so its registration was immaterial as to qualified status in 2016.
In 2018, the party polled 1.85% for Governor, below 3%. Therefore, it needs registration of 3% of the gubernatorial vote to be qualified for 2020. As of the November 3, 2018 registration tally, it has 7,442, a slight increase from the previous months’ tally. Alaska won’t know the final vote cast for Governor until November 16. The election night total was 239,946, but that doesn’t include the absentee votes. Chances are the party will only need a few hundred more registrations in order to be qualified.