On April 23, the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously removed Congressman Doug Lamborn from the Republican primary ballot. He has been in Congress since the 2006 election and he intends to run for re-election. He was removed because two of his petition circulators were not residents of Colorado when they worked on his petition. The petition requires 1,000 signatures of registered Republicans.

The case is Kuhn v Williams, 2018 CO 30. The decision is 28 pages.

In 2008, the Tenth Circuit ruled in an Oklahoma case that bans on out-of-state circulators are unconstitutional. Yes on Term Limits v Savage, 550 F.3d 1024 (2008). Colorado is in the Tenth Circuit. The Colorado Supreme Court did not mention the Yes on Term Limits decision, and said it is not expressing any opinion on whether the Colorado residency requirement for circulators is constitutional or not.

Presumably Congressman Lamborn will now bring a constitutional challenge. The Colorado primaries are on June 26, so any such constitutional case will need to move very fast. There are other Republicans on the primary ballot for the 5th district. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the news.

This news story from Illinois covers the new Conservative Party that will try to get a gubernatorial candidate on the ballot this year. It happens to mention that Illinois law won’t let anyone circulate a petition to get a candidate on the general election ballot, if that same circulator worked to get a primary candidate on the ballot in the same year. The story also says that House Speaker Michael Madigan has a database of all the individuals who circulated for a primary candidate in Illinois this year.

THe Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in Soltysik v Padilla, 16-55758, on February 8, 2018. This is the case over California party labels on the ballot. One of the three judges on the panel was Stephen Reinhardt. But then Judge Reinhardt died on March 29.

The Ninth Circuit has now chosen Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson, a Clinton appointee, to replace Judge Reinhardt in that case. She will now listen to the recording of the oral argument (if she hasn’t done so already), and read all the briefs, and thus will be able to participate in the decision when it comes out.