On June 25, a U.S. District Court in the U.S. Virgin Islands said it would not now rule on whether independent candidate Positive Nelson should be on the November 2018 ballot. Instead, Nelson must seek relief from the territorial court. The Virgin Islands elects its governor and lieutenant governor as a team. The ticket had been rejected because the Lieutenant Governor candidate, Gary Udhwani, may not have been a registered voter when the petition was submitted. Udhwani had been a registered voter in the past, and his name was apparently purged without telling him. Also he collected some of the signatures, and the Virgin Islands law does not allow unregistered individuals to circulate a petition (although that policy violates the U.S. Supreme Court decision American Constitutional Law Foundation v Buckley).

If the territorial court gives no relief, the U.S. District Court will then take action. Nelson v Fawkes, 1:18cv-17.

Like most states that allow write-in primaries, New Mexico sets a minimum number of votes that a write-in candidate must receive, in order to be nominated and appear on the November ballot. This year, New Mexico Libertarians running for statewide office need 230 write-in votes. It isn’t enough to just get the most votes in the primary; the minimum must be met.

The New Mexico Secretary of State’s official tally says the party’s candidate for Governor only got 175 write-in votes. See this story. Voters who cast a write-in vote are supposed to fill in the bubble on the paper ballot next to the write-in line. Otherwise the vote-counting scanner won’t count the write-in. The Libertarian Party is asking for a hand recount, which should not be very expensive because there were only about 850 voters who cast a ballot in the Libertarian primary. The party believes that if they can get a hand count, that will find more write-in votes from voters who didn’t fill in the bubble.

Courts in other states have been split over whether such write-ins can be counted. Washington and Colorado state courts ruled that they should count, but California courts ruled that they should not, although later the California law was changed to validate such write-ins if they make a difference. Thanks to Rick Lass for the link.

On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v Becerra, 16-1140. The 5-4 majority said that a California law requiring anti-abortion health centers to tell their clients how they can obtain an abortion probably violates the First Amendment.

The two-page concurrence by Justice Anthony Kennedy, co-signed by Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, says, “This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression.” Also the majority opinion itself, by Justice Clarence Thomas, says on page 12, “As with other kinds of speech, regulating the content of professionals’ speech poses the inherent risk that the Government seeks not to advance a legitimate regulatory goal, but to suppress unpopular ideas or information.”

Both quotes are relevant to the pending lawsuit Soltysik v Padilla, now awaiting a decision from the Ninth Circuit. The issue in that case is a California election law that compels registered members of unqualified parties to have the ballot label, “Party preference: none”. The plaintiff is a registered Socialist and he wants the ballot to say that he prefers the Socialist Party. Other candidates who have been on California primary ballots in recent years are registered in the Socialist Workers Party, the Constitution Party, and the Socialist Equality Party. They also were forced to say they had no party preference.