The Eleventh Circuit will hold oral argument the last week of September in Wilding v Democratic National Committee, 17-14194. This is the lawsuit filed in 2016 by individuals who supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination and who had contributed money to the national party. They argue that the national party did not follow its own rules about neutrality in the presidential nomination contest.
As previously reported, the Maine Republican Party has filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the First Amendment’s Freedom of Association clause permits the party to decide for itself whether it wants to use ranked choice voting in its primaries. The Maine Republican Party also argues that the supporters of ranked choice voting should not be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit.
Here is the 8-page brief of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, defending its right to intervene in the case. The judge will decide in a few days whether to approve intervention. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.
On May 8, Eunice Groark died at the age of 80. In 1990 she and Lowell Weicker were elected on a joint ticket to be Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, under the party label “A Connecticut Party.” In 1994, when their terms expired, Weicker did not run for re-election. So A Connecticut Party nominated Groark for Governor. She polled 18.88% of the vote. See this story.
This was a good showing, but below the 20% needed to maintain the party’s status as a major party with its own primary. Also in the November 1994 election, A Connecticut Party nominated Joseph Lieberman for re-election to the U.S. Senate, and he polled 25.94% of the vote on the “A Connecticut Party” line. He was also the Democratic nominee and was re-elected that year.
She was the first female Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut and one of the very few minor party members to hold that office during the 20th century in any state. Currently the only third party member who holds a Lieutenant Governor position is David Zuckerman, a member of the Vermont Progressive Party.
On August 30, 2016, Florida held its congressional-state office primaries. One of the closer contests was the race between incumbent Democratic congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and professor Tim Canova in the 23rd district, which is mostly in Broward County. The results were: Wasserman Schultz 28,809; Canova 21,907.
Canova suspected that the results were inaccurate. On October 19, 2017, he filed a public records request to see the ballots. Federal law says election officials must retain ballots until 22 months after any federal primary or election. But after Canova filed his lawsuit, Broward County election officials disposed of all the 2016 primary ballots. Canova sued. On May 11, 2018, the state trial court ruled that the destruction of the ballots was unlawful, as was the failure of the county to produce the ballots so that Canova could inspect them. Here is the 9-page opinion in Canova v Snipes, Broward Co. Circuit Court, CACE17-010904.
Ironically, earlier this year, Canova withdrew from the Democratic primary for the same seat this year, and switched to being an independent candidate. Part of his motivation was despair that he could get a fair vote-counting process in this year’s Democratic primary. If he had won the case earlier, he might have remained in the 2018 primary. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
New Jersey is the only state in which partisan primary ballots give candidates endorsed by the party organization a superior spot on the ballot. This New Jersey Spotlight article explains how the process works. The endorsement process is controlled by county political party organizations. So for offices that extend beyond the boundaries of a single county, different candidates in the same race may get the superior ballot position from county to county.
This article also reveals how the term “open primary” means different things in different states. As reading the article shows, “open primary” in New Jersey refers to a primary in which the party organization has chosen to make no endorsement. That is true for Pennsylvania as well.
