On January 4, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted two partisan gerrymandering cases. State governments of North Carolina and Maryland had placed these appeals in front of the Supreme Court. In each case the 3-judge U.S. District Courts had invalidated the congressional districts as a partisan gerrymander. The Court will hold oral argument in March. The two cases are Rucho v Common Cause, 18-422; and Lamone v Benisek, 18-726. Rucho is a North Carolina State Senator, and Lamone is head of the Maryland State Board of Elections. Here is the North Carolina appeal. Here is the Maryland filing.

Four New Mexico Democratic legislators have introduced HB 55, the National Popular Vote Plan bill. In 2017, the same bill passed the State Senate but not the House. The four sponsors are Representatives Gail Chasey and Daymon Ely, and Senators Mimi Stewart and Carlos Cisneros.

On December 28, the Arizona voters who want a special election to fill Senator John McCain’s Senate seat filed this brief. The case is Tedards v Ducey, 2:18cv-4241. McCain died in August 2018 and the state proposes not to hold an election to fill the remainder of that seat until November 2020.

The case also argues that the state law, telling the Governor he or she must appoint a member of the same party who had held the seat earlier, violates the Elections Clause.

The brief distinguishes Valenti v Rockefeller, the 1968 case involving the seat of Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. In that case, Kennedy was killed in June 1968 and the New York voters who sued for a special election insisted that the special election be held in November 1968. They lost. The new Arizona case says the Arizona case is different than the New York case, because the Arizona plaintiffs never demanded that the McCain seat be filled in November 2018, just that it be held sometime in 2019.