U.S. Supreme Court Sets Conference Date for Utah Republican Case

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Republican Party of Utah v Cox on Friday, January 4, 2019. This is the case in which the party argues that the First Amendment’s freedom of association clause allows the party to decide for itself how to nominate candidates. Any news from the conference will not be revealed until Monday, January 7, at the earliest.

It will be interesting to see whether the Court asks the state to respond in advance of the conference date. If the Court doesn’t ask for a response before the conference date, it is a virtual certainty that the Court will reject the case.

Jill Stein’s Pennsylvania Recount Lawsuit Results in Settlement Eliminating Vote-Counting Machines with No Paper Trail

Pennsylvania state officials have settled the lawsuit Jill Stein v Cortes, e.d., 2:16cv-6287, so that the state will give up using vote-counting machines that don’t have a paper trail. The settlement was approved on November 29 by the U.S. District Court that had been handling the case. The only two plaintiffs in this case have been Stein, Green Party presidential nominee in 2016, and a Pennsylvania voter, Randall Reitz.

This is the same lawsuit in which Stein also challenged the Pennsylvania laws that made it virtually impossible for her to obtain a recount of the Pennsylvania election results in November 2016. That part of the case was dropped earlier this year. Pennsylvania recount law requires a notarized petition of three voters inside each precinct for which a recount is sought. This is extremely difficult for a statewide recount request.

Until this settlement, 72% of Pennsylvania voters live in counties with no paper trail. Some counties did have a paper trail. Each county decides for itself which kinds of machine to use.

Here is the Complaint which Stein filed December 5, 2016, to initiate the lawsuit. The U.S. District Court will keep jurisdiction of the case to make sure the state complies with the settlement.

Light Blogging For Remainder of November

I am going on a vacation November 22-30 to visit a friend who lives in Israel, so I probably won’t be able to blog very much during the remainder of November.

There are ballot access legal decisions that could come out at any time, in Alabama and California. There are also pending constitutional ballot access cases in other states, but they aren’t ready for a decision yet. Also the debates case decision could come out at any time (Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission).

New constitutional ballot access cases are likely to be filed soon in Florida, Maine, Maryland, and Texas.

New Partial Massachusetts Registration Data

Massachusetts registration tallies are issued very infrequently, only twice in election years. The Secretary of State has posted the October 17, 2018 tally. See it here. It does not include the totals for the parties that were not qualified in advance of the election. Therefore, it only has Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and independent/miscellaneous. BAN is attempting to get the new figures for the unqualified parties.

The new percentages are: Democratic 33.11%; Republican 10.30%; Libertarian .35%; independent and miscellaneous 56.24%.

The last tally, for August 15, 2018, was: Democratic 33.22%; Republican 10.37%; Libertarian .32%; independent and miscellaneous 56.10%.