On June 11, independent gubernatorial candidate Positive Nelson sued the U.S. Virgin Islands elections department to require that his name be put on the November 2018 ballot. The U.S. Virgin Islands requires candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor to run as a team. Nelson’s running mate is Gary Udhwani. The elections office invalidated the Nelson-Udhwani petition because it says Udhwani is not a registered voter.

The petition required 100 signatures, and Udhwani circulated many of the petition sheets. The elections office says circulators must be registered voters, and because Udhwani is not a registered voter, his petition sheets are invalid. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v American Constitutional Law Foundation that governments cannot require petitioners to be registered voters.

The elections office also says that it suspects that some of the petitions were circulated before Nelson had chosen Udhwani, and that after Udhwani was chosen, the petitions were altered to add his name as the Lieutenant Governor running mate. The elections office also argues that the lawsuit does not belong in federal court. The lawsuit is Nelson v Fawkes, 1:18cv-17.

The plaintiffs argue that when the elections office removed Udhwani from the list of registered voters, it had a duty to first notify him that he was about to be disqualified. The elections office replies that their records show that Udhwani might have been removed decades ago, and the elections office has no records that far back to show whether he was notified or not.

Anyone can listen to this webinar on the California top-two system, by clicking on this link. It was conducted on June 7, two days after the California primary. It was scheduled to start at noon, and it did start at noon, but Steve Peace had been misinformed about the starting time, so he didn’t join until twenty minutes after the event had started. But both had equal time. The event lasted 43 minutes, and was sponsored by Ballotpedia.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the webinar is that Steve Peace declared his support for changing top-two to top-four, combined with ranked choice voting. Peace is the lead author of the California top-two system law, and is co-founder of the Independent Voters Project. Peace also said he favors restoring write-in space on general election ballots.

On June 13, the Independent Voters Project announced that it now favors top-four instead of top-two. IVP also wants to use ranked choice voting in conjunction with a top-four system. See this story.

On Thursday, June 14, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Minnesota Voters Alliance v Mansky, 16-1435. Here is the opinion. The vote was 7-2.

Minnesota does not let anyone wear any “political badge, political button, or other political insignia” at the polls. The Court concluded this law is too vague, and too far-reaching, to be consistent with the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment. The opinion suggests that a better law is California’s law, which only bans “the visible display…of information that advocates for or against any candidate or measure.”

The Minnesota lawsuit had been filed after some voters were told they could not wear buttons saying, “Please I.D. me.” Another plaintiff-voter was told he could not wear a T-shirt mentioning the Tea Party. The lower courts had upheld the law.

The dissent does not defend the Minnesota law, but says the U.S. Supreme Court should have sent the case to the Minnesota state courts to determine whether the state courts might construe the state law to be less restrictive.